Denial of frost

As I walked down my street, away from the setting sun and towards the well, I looked at the elongated shadow cast across my path. I realized that the image in front of me was yet another reminder of how fortunate I've been to be able to travel in my life. In front of me, there were open grassy hills climbing from the slightly frozen ground: this was my present. Though the details couldn't be discerned from my shadow alone, I knew that the shape represented the global wardrobe that I'd collected: boots from Portland, socks from San Jose, jeans from Manhattan, a jacket from Madrid, underwear from Dublin, and a hooded sweatshirt I got in London that described the tour plan of but one of my Cirque periods. Soon enough, I'll be wearing Mongolian winter boots or a wool/cashmere-lined hat.

At a minimum, I'll have the Mongolian frost adorning my eyebrows: a seasonal wardrobe that comes at a cost of but a lost breath or two.

As the season begins to cool, I'm starting to understand why Mongolians drink everything at such boiling hot temperatures. Though my ger is only 40 degrees (meaning that things are going to get MUCH colder), there's a very small time frame in which my tea finds itself in that zone between scalding and cold. More often than not, I miss that window.

Perhaps it was the fact that the last few nights I've slept with the opening in my sleeping bag only big enough to awkwardly stick my arm through to check the time on my phone. Perhaps it was the fact that this morning at 3 a.m., it was 28 degrees and 96% humidity outside and not much warmer inside. The slightest presence of a sniffle in my numbed nose and the worry of congestion developing pushed me to fight my stubbornness and acknowledge the fact that no matter how much I like cold temperatures...

It was time to light a fire.

My hashaa family has been asking me every day if it's cold in my ger. Every morning, I've replied that it wasn't and that I liked the cold. Though the ger allows me to conceal my home life, there are certain things that can't be hidden from the world. So, as I struck that first match (which blew out), then the second, I felt a bit like the Vatican, for the white smoke from my chimney broadcast the message that I had made a decision.