by Steve Sakiyama –
At my age, I avoid risk. Going to a shopping paradise like Costco without a list is reckless for me. My wallet shivers just thinking about it.
I wasn’t always like this. During my youthful years, I did wild things like hung out at sketchy bowling alleys and pool halls, and (drum roll please) … drove my mom’s convertible with the roof down in the middle of the night! Nothing risky about that, except it was January in Northern Ontario when the temperature was a balmy three zillion degrees below zero.
One frigid night, I yanked the car door open and slid onto the ice-cold vinyl seat. It started with a terrible groan, and a dashboard warning light flashed as if to say “Are you kidding me?”
When the convertible top opened, I turned the heater to the max in some bizarre attempt to keep warm. In my mind was the narration of a nature documentary: “Steve and the Emperor Penguins struggle onto the barren Antarctic ice to begin an arduous journey in the most inhospitable place on earth … his mother’s open convertible.”
As the car picked up speed, I hunched lower into my seat, my scarf flailing wildly in the biting wind. My brain’s rational side (which was much smaller then) whispered “please, turn around.” Yet upon reaching the countryside, darkness enveloped me and the whole vista of the night sky appeared. Slowing to a crawl, I looked up to view a starry panorama that called me to drive deeper into the ethereal heavens. Yes, it was cold, but it was the night sky’s grandeur of dignified glory that gave me chills. Staring into the eternal does that to you.
Speaking of chills, when it’s cold out, why does the wind make you feel colder? As wind drives cold air past us, heat is drawn away from our bodies, so we feel colder than what the temperature alone would lead us to believe. To better represent what it really feels like, the “wind chill index” is reported when it is very cold and windy (yes, these conditions can happen even here). Based on studies of heat loss from human faces exposed to cold and wind, the index is expressed in temperature-like units. For example, it may be -10°C, but with a wind speed of 30 km/h, the wind chill index (i.e., what it really feels like) is -20°C. This is useful to know in order to dress warm enough for the conditions.
So what’s ahead for the South Island as we drive into January weather? The outlook is steering toward a warmer-than-normal month, but there is no clear signal about what’s happening with precipitation.
Before making any New Year’s resolutions this January, on a clear night, drive into the country and take a walk. You can reunite with your sofa later. Just as headlights make us focus only on the road ahead, so too in life we tend to fixate on what is right in front of us: the urgent, immediate stuff. We forget about the big picture, the long view, the distant perspective necessary for vision and inspiration. By walking and gazing up into the unfolding starry panorama, you see the ultimate big picture – an eternal perspective on what truly matters in life.
~ Weatherwit
