Warmth

Brrrr, shivering cold. That wet chilly deep in your bones cold. The worst kind. Bundled up in the sleeping bag after lunch staring up at the knotted wood and scribbled messages all over the cabin ceiling. Katie coming in to distract and chat. Summer is a long time coming up here...

I took one of my students out on the lake today on the pontoon boat to collect phytoplankton samples for a project. We stayed out almost three hours. Choppy water, drizzly rain, and gusts of wind. One of those grim resigned looks on my face after the numbness set in. You know the one your dog gets when you try giving it a bath? ...But, I was able to daydream and pretend. Pirate on the high seas. Seafaring explorer. Land Ho! ...Needless to say by the end of it I needed warmth bad and spent the evening getting the stove roaring in my cabin and thawing myself out from the outside in.

Like most all human being, my eyes are drawn and mesmerized by fire and the elemental dance of the flames juxtaposed by darkness. In between throwing more fuel to the chorus in my wood stove I snapped this shot of the dance...