Mind-numbing, bone-chilling, frozen-toe cold

It's that time of year when there's no seriously good reason for living here. My phone sports its own cute digital thermometer--it's there 24/7, even if I don't want to know the temp. For the record, right now it's -23 F, and the phone isn't figuring wind chill.

In fact, what seems chilliest about the world outside my window is that there is no wind. Let me repeat that because it sounds like falsehood: there is no wind. Out here in the Upper Midwest, this killer of a weather phenom isn't going away soon, and it's already overstayed its welcome. 

Yesterday, Sunday, we experienced one of the small blessings of such utterly horrible temperatures. We emptied the freezer, put all the provender outside, then let the thick frost melt away into a pan. Barbara cleaned it up, plugged it in, we shimmied the thing back into its corner, then retrieved the whole mess of frozen goods from the front porch (looked like a food drive outside of our place), and finished up, proving that such horridly cold weather is at least good for defrosting freezers.

But not much else. A good old bachelor named A. J. Boersma once told me that in the little farmhouse they lived in when he and his family immigrated to America--it was out in the hills near Fairview, SD--had no insulation to speak of, shingles just nailed to boards pounded into the studs. When he and his brothers would wake up on mornings like this one, they'd peek up from beneath a ton of blankets and check the nails in the ceiling to see how much frost hung on them. 

It's possible that the Omaha who might have lived here--and certainly did both farther north and farther south--found possible shelter in earth homes the Arikara taught them to build. The Yanktons just stoked up the fire in the tipi, I guess, and laid a half-ton more stones over the bottom edge of the buffalo hides their tipis used for siding.

Buffalo, of course, had no problem. I remember reading somewhere that in the horrible blizzard of the early 90s, North Dakota lost thousands of cattle to three-feet of snow and the extreme temps--and just one buffalo. Of course, bison pull on an extra layer or two (or three) of winter coats, and come factory-equipped with their own snow plows. Just don't worry about buffalo.

 All the sensible retirees are playing "Up and Down the River" in the community room of their Florida trailer courts right now. Even shuffle board sounds good. It's so cold, even the buffalo are thinking seriously about Arizona. 

Just how close is it? So cold that mailmen fear for polar bears. . .that people get morning coffee on a stick. . .that old men fart in snowflakes. . .that cold cops turn tazers on each other. 

Look, no matter how to cut it or slice it or plow it, it's just freakin' cold. 

And that's why, this morning, I'm greatly thankful I'm not in the old Boersma house or even waking up beneath a buffalo robe. I'm just thankful for sweet, warm shelter--and, oh, yes, that the freezer's defrosted.