brumous.

Brumous (adj.): of grey skies and winter days; filled with heavy clouds or fog; relating to winter or cold, sunless weather

I LOVE THIS WORD.  I discovered it a few weeks ago and decided that it would probably be a good ten months before I could pull this one out of my pocket of intelligent sounding words, but today is the exact definition of brumous so I've been using it left and right.    

We are all aware that I love cold weather.  I love it so much that sometime I purposely don't wear a jacket just so I can embrace the sting of the piercing wind on my skin.  I'm not sure I have an answer for why I love the cold so much I just always have.  Maybe because the cold makes me feel vulnerable, in the sense that I need something other than myself to make me warm.  I cannot rely on my skin and bones or my heart or my knowledge or anything else that makes me who I am to make me warm.  I must resort to heavy jackets, longs socks, boots, apple cider, a fire or another person to keep the blood pumping to my heart.  Vulnerability is the state of being exposed and when I am walking from one side of campus to the other in 30 degree weather I feel completely exposed to the world; it can physically do anything to me it wants and I will allow it.  I cannot always rely on just myself to meet my needs.  Cold weather reminds me of that.

I like fog because it gives me an excuse to use my imagination.  There is not a Walmart behind that cloud, it is a forest of trees and beyond those trees are ice caped mountains.  During the summer of 2007 my family went on a European vacation and one of our many stops was to Edinburgh, Scotland.  We went on a tour of Edinburgh Castle and on this particular July afternoon the whole city was covered in a thick fog, so when I looked over the side of the castle I could not see all of the commercialism.  My dad can take credit for making me view the castle in a way that many other people couldn't.  He told me to imagine the city below us as it was when the castle was built in BC.  I loved putting my imagination to the test and because of it that was one of the most special experiences on that trip.  Today as I was driving I could only see 40 feet in front of me, so I reminded myself of that day in Scotland and decided that today I was going to use my imagination in the same way.  Right now I am looking out the window of my third floor apartment and I can see the houses and cars, but beyond that I am imagining a lake that is so close to being frozen, but because of the warm week we had it is not.  Surrounding the lake are massive pine trees and tall hills.  

As much as I love the winter, the world is dead.  Lucky for us in a few weeks it will be brought back to life with warm days and lots of colors.  Today is dark and gloomy, but we have bright and beautiful to look forward to.  It is guaranteed that there are better more beautiful things a few weeks away.  I will celebrate the fact that there is as much hope for my life as there is for this brumous day!  

This morning I woke up to a little bit of that colorful hope.  I am in love with this bouquet of flowers.  IN LOVE. 

 Lubbock's brumous' day.  Can you see the lake and pine trees? :)