We talk about the weather. We’ve worked outside all week,with...

We talk about the weather. We’ve worked outside all week,
with temperatures between twenty-two and forty. We talk about the possibility
of snow or rain, of the thickness of the air, of the timing of sunrise and
sunset. ‘Feels a little colder,’ we’ll comment in the afternoon. ‘It’s the wind
that’ll get us today.’ ‘Tomorrow’s supposed to drop back down.’ It’s a
different interaction with the outside: aware of our fingers, our toes, of the
upped hurt of a banged thumb, of the diminished power of the battery-operated
tools, of the hazards of the ice patches on the ground in the small backyard. We
turn to watch squirrels chasing each other up a tree. We wonder what the pair
of birds are up in the branches, bigger than blue jays with brownish yellow
chests. The pair hangs out, flies off with the first scream of the skill saw
which struggles to move through the frozen planks of pressure treated wood. We
talk about how hungry we are when we get home in the dim late afternoon,
starving, ravenous, the body having burned all day to keep warm. Cheese, dried
meats, fat, protein. Replenishment, I am sated in some new way, one that goes
beyond calories, a more total sort of touching at the source. I wake in the
night and slip the covers off, my furnace self still cooking, heated and
heating. We’ve only ever built decks in warmer months, in shortsleeves,
sweating and getting freckled in the sun. Now, here, closing in on the middle
of January, soberest January, in thin light and cold air, we pound nails, and
find ourselves, under all our layers, warm.