Somehow the notion held by most that it is easier to stay warm in a cold clime than stay cool in a warm clime offers less then adequate solace.
Cold is cold. It drills to the bone. If you walk out of a shower and steam comes off your body: it is cold.
If the carpet crunches like permafrost when you walk on it: it is cold and when linoleum feels like the surface of a glacier...turn up the heat.
And remember if you have a woodstove, it does not have a thermostat and you have to feed it or will make you unhappy.
Cold has it's uses. Cold beer, cold cuts, cold drinks, cold sholders, cold airconditioning, cold showers (well, let's call that more as a counter measure)
But most of all cold makes us appreciate the warmth of summer. It
gives us contrast.
All and all Cold makes me blue.......until I turn up the heat.

Some of the trees I had to take down were hit with pine beetle. A little beetle about the size of a thimble, shiny black with iridescent streaks the reflected colors of a oily rainbow on a puddle. Called pine or bark beetles they have gorged themselves on the Douglas firs.
They have killed many up the box canyon and toward the Southwest of me. I can see where they have wiped out a hillside of Forest Service planted clones. Yes, clones and BLM USFS have been planting them for tens of years. Generally about 20 percent survive after planting. So much for clones.

After dropping one of these unfortunate trees and splitting the wood up you can see where the devils have done their work. Their larve burrowing about eating the tree to death.
Makes the wood somewhat punky to burn and burn it we must or the larve will survive. The woodpeckers used to kill them but the BLM and USFS spraying manged to destroy their population. And so it goes.

Loggers clearcut, weaken the forest and the beetles come. Now the forests are getting so poor and absent of old growth, the multinational corps are finding them worthless for "harvesting", well at least for now.
There is a lesson I learned or maybe it is like the sound of a distant storm coming.

It is something about us regular folks, the people corporate gangs consider the consumer and where we live "the Plantation"
Something about us being "Harvested"
Something about the "harvesting" of us causing a great weakness until we are not worth exploiting.

Maybe it is just something I ate..Something I bought that was manufactured instead of cooked with love and humor. Maybe I am just a naughty monkey in a tree waiting to be "harvested".
Bon Appetit!

Somewhere our Indian Summer is somewhere else. Maybe back East since the Northwest is entertaining Jack Frost.
Snow, frost warnings and drizzling cold rain are signature of our Wintry friend.
Meanwhile it is time to dig around the closet for the wool sweater, the hooded sweatshirt, and the rest of the gear that keeps one warm.
Seems like the Vine Maple just got it's color and the Elk are making there way down from the high country.
Looking outside in the wet there stands more wood to be split and stacked.
Maybe Jack Frost will take a few days off before he lays his snowy hand on us.