Cabin fever

I leave the house in nostril freezing -5 degrees, and started the work week wearing layers and layers.  I watch myself this winter, observing when I tire of the cold, when I revel in the beauty of the snow, when I ache for sun.  Even though I'm a native Midwesterner, this first winter in a decade is becoming a tough go.

So yesterday, when I was casting about in a funk, determined to not spend another cold day shut inside, I was delighted when Monte suggested a Sunday drive to Fairfield.  (It has been too icy for a trailrun in the forest for nearly a month now, and our indoor track run was cut short for preparations for a meet. So we haven't been OUT is a good long while.)

To see the roll of the land again, and the sun, and the soft blue sky did wonders for my mood.  I need the land, having spent so much time outdoors the last ten years.  I need the sky and the serendipity of doing something off-schedule.

Inside the café on the square in Fairfield, see the violinist's bow?

We traveled down secondary highways, highways with W before them (as in W41) and highways with sometimes hopeful and sometimes descriptive names like Pleasant Plain Road. 

We had the good fortune to land in an open café/coffeehouse on the Fairfield downtown square where people were knitting, playing violin, engaged in long conversations, or just passing time.

And I was reminded how easily we get into a routine, how quickly the winter becomes long, how important it is to be mindful of when we need a jolt of something new--a new place, a new adventure, a new view to life.  If anything, this Iowa escapade is just that--an exercise to examine the ways the frontier can fit (and maybe are needed) in ordinary life.