People keep warning me about the winters up here.
Oh, the winters…, they say.
Just wait till the winter.
My wife, I asked her (she’s from here),
What is it with the winters?
You people make human sacrifices to the ice gods?
Just you wait, she said.
Just you wait, desert rat–
your tail’s going to snap right off.
People warned me about the winters, too. So much rain, you’ll be miserable waiting nine months for the sun, etc. But I loved every drop.
It has not escaped my notice that millions of people live here and they didn’t just arrive this past spring. As for how I will do in the dark and cold buttocks of the year, I’m not a complete stranger to winter; more important than that, I chose to be here, and I so choose to accept all that there is here (some of it I will be able to complain about, some of it I will be able to write about, and some of it I will be able to do both).