Alive

It’s 8:00 in the morning and the wind is whistling past my apartment with an Antarctic fury. It’s cold, but it makes you feel alive.

There’s a smell in the air--a smell of ice and gum trees--the smell of bright light and blue sky stretching up into infinity; the smell of the noise a cat makes when it hunts.

Makes you feel alive.

Or maybe I’m just cold: Picture this: Mawson and his fellow explorers huddled in a tent while the wind howls outside, piling up snowdrifts as high as the walls. They’ve just eaten their last husky; Mawson turns to his hypothermic friend and says through cracked blue lips from behind an ice-encrusted beard:

Fuck yeah! Makes you feel alive!