“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau.

This weekend, it was too cold even for angels to fly.

It’s been freezing up here the past few weeks; I sometimes feel that the cruel wind is draining the life out of me.

And the cold isn’t over yet. I talked to my daughter the other night, she lives in Brooklyn, and she asked me if I ever thought about moving to a warmer climate.

She’s always been somewhat puzzled by my love of the country, especially in the winter; it is hard to explain. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. This place brought me to life.

I admit there are times when the hardships of winter on a farm – we have to get up early every morning to feed our animals, melt the ice off of our gates, haul water to the heated water bowl.

We can’t tell the dogs, donkeys, sheep, and chickens that we don’t feel like getting out of bed. Maria never complains about this – not once – neither do I. We do not speak poorly of our lives; we are grateful for them. We are where we want to be.

For me, there is no other life than this.

My body struggles to keep me warm; every joint in my body aches.

I admit I have fantasized about sitting in the sun in New Mexico or swimming in a Florida pool sometimes. But I am where I want to be, where I should be, where my life will end if I have anything at all to say about it.

This life informs me, shapes me, inspires me. How empty for me to live in a place where it is never cold, or the seasons never change. I count the days until Spring. When it comes, I will feel real and precious joy. I have so much to write about and photograph.

I told my daughter I didn’t want to move anywhere; this is my home, my place, my last stand. I plan on dying on the new Casper mattress we bought next week.

A lot of excellent and caring people have been e-mailing me tips and suggestions for being warm and passing along ideas – heated blankets, special shoes, wood stoves (have two), safe and efficient portable heaters for my study (have that), layers of clothes (have those), oil heat (have that), heavy-duty gloves (have three pair), and scarves (a closet full) and shoes with Trax and cleats (I’ve given a lot away, they are no good on a farm with manure, mud, and ice. You will never see one on a farmer.)

Maria and I are at a loss to figure out why people think we are so helpless and out of it that we don’t know how to stay warm after more than a decade of blizzards, ice storms, hurricanes, nor-easter, and arctic temperatures.

The truth is, you can never really know what someone needs or doesn’t need from afar. That is the false conceit of social media, this idea that we understand the lives of people we can’t know.

For me, winter is a matter of acceptance, not denial.

Americans are problem solvers; they believe almost all problems can be solved or dealt with by buying something or hiring somebody. They hide from death and suffering; they don’t believe in either.

If living in the country has taught me nothing, it has taught me that I need to embrace and accept that I can’t control; they make life and seasons rich and distinct and meaningful for me.

Being cold is one of those things. I live in upstate New York. It gets cold. Nobody makes me come here, and nobody makes me stay. It’s all on me.

Being cold teaches me the value of being warm, winter teaches me to love color and light, walking on ice teaches me to tread carefully and slowly, fending off snowstorms makes Spring all the more precious to me. So much to say about it.

Life is not just about being comfortable and cozy. It is more complex and harsher than that. Sometimes, I have learned I can bring reality down on my head by wandering around taking photos in subzero weather and getting hypothermia.

It is difficult to explain to people that I can’t take photos outside if I am all bundled up, glasses fogging, camera freezing, the shutter in need of a finger, not a glove.

I can’t see the viewfinder or find the shutter. Being naked is the easiest way to take pictures, but it isn’t proper or practical. Yes, I know there are special gloves and goggles and accessories. I don’t want them.

I have all kinds of tricks for dealing with the cold; I’m a veteran of too many blizzards and ice storms to count. I could teach a class on keeping warm. I don’t want to do that either.

I watch the farmers closely; they seem to know how to do it and survive.

Maria and I have worked out a two-minute drill for feeding the animals – we rush out and toss hay into the feeders and grain in buckets and retreat. She can stay out longer than I can; she doesn’t have heart disease and diabetes and can handle the ice. I well know the wrong fall in the wrong place could endanger our lives here.

That does not make me think of retirement. It makes me work hard to be safe.

We make sure the chickens have heated water, a heating light bulb,  and plenty of food when the storms come.

And yes, in the bitter cold, Maria bears much more of the load than I do these days. I do need to stay indoors in frigid weather, and I know it, and except for the photos, I do it.

That is usually where I get into trouble, so I’m going out for shorter stretches and getting warm in the car in between shots.

It’s working for me. This morning, a kind person suggested heating corn bags and placing them around my feet. You can reach down and touch them if you’re fingers are cold. It is a good idea, worth sharing and exploring. We have several.

We’ve used corn bags in bed on those nights when the arctic wind is assaulting our farmhouse and creeping right through our windows.

We have used heated blankets for years and, every year, have taken steps to warm up the house. New water heaters, two excellent and reliable and safe wood stoves, electric baseboard heating in the bedroom, storm windows for the main floor, suitable gloves, cowls, heavy sox, and special boots,   some insulation work on the vulnerable parts of the farmhouse attic.

Our wood stoves are the best, safest, and most efficient. They kept the house comfortable on a typical winters day. When it falls below zero, they need some help. We have a backup heating oil system with radiators throughout the house.

When Mother Nature gets pissed off, which is more and more frequent. It’s every man and woman for themselves. She can get through just about anything.

I told Emma that I love the winters here, as cold as they can be. They shape me, my work, and the challenges I need in my life.

I take full responsibility for moving to the harsh winter climate. I knew this when I moved here, and the first night I was here, a blizzard with -30 temperatures hit and welcomed me to the other world.

I’ve been up here for nearly 20 years and understand that there are times when you will be cold if you move here. No amount of layers or corn bags will change that. And the animals expect me and Maria to be there promptly, at least twice a day.

There comes the point where there are just some immutable laws that cannot be defied or eliminated.

Mother Nature is more robust and challenging than I am and probably pissed off at how humans are treating here.

I am a great admirer of Henry David Thoreau, who took great pride in making mistakes, solving them, and learning from them by himself. Indeed, his mother often brought him food, but otherwise, nobody could help him or worry about him because nobody knew what he was doing until he wrote about it.

He figured it out. He wrote all of his many mistakes down and put them in Walden. Like me, he learned more from mistakes than success.

He wrote in his journal that because you put castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put the foundations under them.

That is my philosophy and creed. I bought a castle in the air and have worked on the foundation ever since. That work will never be done.

That used to be the way I lived and wrote. It was never in the now, only in retrospect. Nobody could tell me what I needed to know or was doing wrong because nobody knew what I was doing until it was done.

I live in a different world of openness and am changing with it. Thoreau could not have imagined it.

I am adjusting to the change; it almost always makes me uneasy that billions of people can look into my life and consciousness anytime they want. Talk about putting it out there.

But I am responsible for that too, as well as choosing to have a winter in my life every year. I have to take responsibility for how I live; people write to me because I share these things.

Mine is not Thoreau’s world, but it is a good world for me. He would have hung himself reading Facebook every day, with all of its second-guessing and helping and worrying. People even worried about whether Bud would have a dog bed when Zinnia got hers.

There is no getting around it. This is my beautiful world.

I chose it, accept it, love and will hang it onto it for dear life.

There is no other life for me than this.