The Midnight Sun in anticlimatic

On the list of genuinely terrifying episodes of The Twilight Zone, number 1 for me is The Midnight Sun. The basic premise is that earth has been knocked slightly off of it’s orbit to the sun, and has begun spiraling slowly closer to it. The too-close-to-home effect is that the earth is just getting warmer and warmer, and the episode begins a few weeks away from the point where life will be impossible to maintain.

The protagonist is a young woman in a high rise apartment in the city, and the second to last shot is her face- drenched in sweat and screaming, as the paintings around her- her life’s work- melt away. The last shot is even better, but I won’t spoil it for you…

I found myself thinking of this episode while enjoying my first balmy November evening bike ride on record. It is NEVER this warm, this late in the evening, this late in the season. Something I find extremely disquieting, at the moment- though the disquiet could be projection. It is the last night before we know what kind of shit will be hitting the fan tomorrow.

A calm and warm night through the dark, dead streets of the completely vacant old money old cottage resort communities. Rows and rows of gorgeous cottages, all black and shuttered. A labyrinth of streets and sidewalks, empty. Lightless. And this beautiful warm breeze just carrying the world along, for no one, except yours truly on a bicycle.

Winter, as I knew it, departed four years ago and hasn’t returned. A part of me delights in the warmth, the way all life delights in warmth, but the part of me that knows better the counter intuitive nature of nature itself longs for the Old Man’s return.

While I appreciate the gentle touch of summer, the absolute savagery of True Winter has a soul stripping quality that more and more I feel in desperate need of. I don’t know why, exactly. My bank account and this drafty old house couldn’t afford a brutal blizzarding winter like that without some major thermal-turtling on the structural front (I’m talking blanketing off whole rooms, funneling the heat to a small section of the house, isolating core plumbing)- but just typing that is getting me hard, in the proverbial sense.

I have these memories of 2008, recession, absolute brutal winter. I had a part time desk job working nights at the ancient Perry Hotel, and on my nights off- when I’d be up all night curled around the electric fire and my PC window to the world, I’d get extra bundled up and cross country ski across town to this pancake joint that- for whatever reason- decided to try staying open all night long this one particular winter.

Just this blanketed howling moonscape. Flat white with these wicked misty drifts slicing a thousand miles an hour down the streets. Through your face, if you let it- though I always wore goggles and full covering. The street lights would illuminate all of this, but no cars braved the drifting streets at 3 am, so it was always just me. The satisfaction of a warm place after that? Unmatched.

Especially with pancakes and bacon.

Four years it’s been, like I’ve said. Probably more than that. The lake has receded a foot and a half. The ticks now infest swamps and fields of grass I used to crawl nearly naked through as a child without issue. The people from the south- tourists, social media whores- infest our local communities and buy up all of the properties for summer vacation homes and air bnbs. Every year they stay later and later. It’s True Winter that always kept them at bay. Kept them from staying “year round,” but every year more and more make the permanent transition.

Please, God, Something, Anything- bring back real winter. Bring it back soon. Cleanse the palate.