Thoughts on Temperature, Comfort, Civilization, Outdoors. Bluebird Skies and No Trout at Round Valley Reservoir

Bluebird skies and no trout. I did see a dad and very young son on the dock with rod and bobber by the gravel launch to the left. Funny seeing a red and white bobber in use with 28 degrees. Now it's goodbye to cold weather, so enjoy it while it lasts. I just wish I could get out on the ice, and I suppose some were out today to the north in New Jersey. I loved the enveloping pressure of cold on me today aided by breeze, and while I detested cold as a boy, once I tried ice fishing at 15, I began to like it. As a boy I enjoyed a lot of comfort at home and I was very conscious of how good all that felt. Hot weather felt exciting as if comfort at 70 degrees was keyed up in the way that comfort is the prerequisite to energetic good times. I'm just imagining things, but it's interesting to speculate on. Why does any temperature feel good? Just because we can survive without clothes at 70? Perhaps cold is punishment and guys like me who enjoy it have a need to feel the oppression and like it because they honestly desire and yearn for redemption, the cold being a strong dose of penance. How about the old phrase, "Put him on ice"? This seems really crazy, but I went to church every Sunday as a boy and teen (besides at age 14 when I quit choir for a while and fished instead), and I'm only human. Anyone exposed to all that solemnity will have a hard time of it, especially when his father is an employee of that church. At least it was Episcopal. But I usually have no resentment for that. If it made me capable of enjoying cold weather, that's a plus as far as I'm concerned. I certainly appreciate the comforts of home, but I wouldn't want to feel I could only accept life behind walls. I want to feel I belong with the planet out there. I go out on my own terms, but I develop that logic right out there participating in the real world. So sometimes I'm not sure if I'll return home to that sweet sense of security, since the outdoors has no limits and if you go too far, it takes as long to return. But walls and bars, the kind that keep prisoners in jail, have a lot in common. So if enjoying the weather is penatential, if I spelled that rightly, at least it's out in the open without guard towers looking down on you, but I had forgotten about our government's domestic drone project for a moment. Oh, well. It's still a nice try. And you never know, maybe a better genius than Foucault will come along--all could Foucault could do was tell us that our civilization is an incarcerarium. A genius who can actually liberate the prison. I guess he would have to return from a very faraway place.