The Whitehorse Winter

I chose Whitehorse because of the blistering cold and hour-miles of seclusion. I pioneered myself a cheap, forgotten miner’s cabin and hermited there for a winter, encouraging myself to write. Often, my eyes wore tired of the pale blind of the empty white page, and I sauntered—caped deep under an itchy flannel blanket—to the porch I kept shoveled and cocooned into the old oak rocking chair there. I tended over my wounded words while I rocked, pretending my steam-breath was perique pipe smoke. By spring, I had mustered a thick beard and not much else. I spent no other winters in Whitehorse.