Winter Wonder

I decided that I was going to die Friday night. I knew exactly how it was going to happen. I decided Friday night as I walked home from the hospital that if I were not a medical student, but a soldier in Napoleon's army on the long march out of Russia, I would have let myself die that night. It wouldn't have mattered who was waiting for me back home. There was no escaping the cold this particular night. No 19th century coat would have been capable of preserving my will to live. Being in that cold through the entire night, only to wake to it biting at your nose, your lips, all of your tips... Why endure such suffering when there were so many miles to go. Just imagining that conjured up the comparison of a capsized crew in the middle of the ocean with no raft or life jackets. This is how I imagine I would feel were I in the middle of nowhere, Russia on a night as cold as this. The hopelessness of it all would have reached a breaking point. Unlike most nights, I wouldn't gather around the campfire to sing with the men or to tell my jokes and do a dance for my mates. Instead, I would have avoided the water and cabbage dinner, I would have walked away from camp, past the tents, telling the soldiers standing guard that I had a fit of terrible bowel movements coming on and that they better let me pass or they would regret it. Once I was far enough away so that the light from all of the campfires had merged in my eyes to be a faint, questionable glow, I would burrow myself down in the snow and go to sleep.


I'm pretty sure that is what I would have done, or at least that is what I imagined I would do as I walked home in my 21st century gear the other night: 700 fill down coat, alpaca wool hat, some sweet suede shoes, 100% cotton blue jeans (these actually helped simulate how a Napoleonic soldier felt on those bitter Russian nights.


Luckily, I am a medical student and not a soldier weary from marching for years across eastern Europe. Yeah, I'm not even in eastern Europe. I'm in Rochester, New York. It may be hard to tell from the beginning, but this post takes a quick, middle of the night-I was up til 4am last night-and I better do better this night-though things aren't looking too good if I want to actually write this-post (BTW, that was all one word) look into why I love this place I currently call home.


Friday night was pretty cold, but walking home Sunday night was overwhelming with joy. One of the great things about a snowy winter is that the nights are never that dark. The white ground reflects any natural light. Speaking of natural light (not the beverage), Rochester nights often have amazing moons.There is actually just one moon in the sky, sorry if that is confusing. What I'm trying to say is that the moon looks amazing here. Better than a bright night, the thing that is great about all the snow is that it is transformative. Seriously. Winter in Maryland is a season when the Earth turns brown and barren, and the temperature drops and the chill gets to your bones. It looks the same in January as it does in September, but too cold to be outside. In Rochester, I feel like when the leaves fell from the trees this fall, the stage props completely changed and I now find myself acting in a totally different play.

Today I woke up, looked out of my window, and what did I see... Sorry, no popcorn balls.

A confirmation that I was no longer whereever I was in the fall and summer, but still living in this make-believe land. This is a shot out of my bedroom window this morning. The nieghborhood you are looking at is called the, White Coat Ghetto. It borders the hospital and is filled with medical students, doctors, nurses, etc. I walk around in this neighborhood visiting friends or heading to school and it is like I no longer live wherever I lived in the fall. It is a completely new experience. Maybe that is what is so great about this place. It's a place of change, change that I believe in.