TheBanyanTree: the weather today

[Julie Anna Teague]

In a word: cold.  The actual temp was 16F when we got up this morning, 
with a windchill of zero.  My plan was to stay in my jammies, crawl 
back into bed with the laptop and cuppa joe, and work from home.  I got 
through the first three steps, only to discover that something was 
wrong with our cable internet connection and I couldn't connect to 
anything.  So I hauled myself up and out into the cold in down coat, 
long johns, gloves and boots.  When I got here I discovered I had a 
dollar off coupon from the campus coffee shop, so to compensate for not 
being home in my jammies, I decided to buy myself a treat.  Got back 
into coat and gloves and boots and hauled myself up the hill behind my 
building to the Student Union.

Coming back out, standing at the top of the hill with a steaming latte 
in my hand, thinking things weren't going to be so bad afterall, I 
stopped for a minute to breathe in the view:  ice cold and clear, a 
stiff wind in my face, the hill falling away below me to a tangle of 
brick paths and ancient sycamores, the hemlock lined creek at the 
bottom with its worn-smooth wooden bridges, Dunn Meadow on the other 
side of the creek covered in a light frosting of snow and very few 
footprints yet on this cold cold morning.  There is a beauty to winter 
that will certainly elude me by February, but still comes as a sharp 
intake of breath and a sense of wonder and surprise in December.

Julie