It didn’t matter any more. They had had their time. Now it was mine, and someday it would be for someone else. The place stored passion. I went back outside, unloaded the car, packed my supplies away and lit, for the first time, the coal oil lamps. Their light flickered on the walls, competing with the fire.

I went to bed early and slept. I dreamed of the old man in the hardware store, and woke up content.

11

11

I should not have been afraid of winter; I should have understood that not even its toughness could hurt me here. But I was afraid for a long time, of many things.

Food. It seemed to me there was plenty — the freezer was full, I had shelves of preserved fruits and jams, and bags of baking supplies, and every few weeks the farmer down the road would leave off eggs; but would it be enough?

And I was afraid too because of the great difference between a home and a prison. In the rest of the year there had been at least a choice, and I could have sought company or help if I had wanted; for much of the winter here that choice would barely exist. The weather would bury me and I did not want to chafe against isolation because it was forced and not voluntary.

The wood was another question. The piles looked to me enormous, but what did I know about what might be used in a cold winter? Still, if it ran out, it wasn’t as if I actually needed it for warmth; the fires were more a prop than a physical necessity.

I looked ahead and saw — something that did not fit the fear, a place where fear had no part: the snow falling, driving or gentle, piling up around my windows, touching them, myself inside, wrapped in a quilt in front of the fire, reading or watching, and the picture was — serene.

And then, seeing that, I relaxed. I understood the fear came from somewhere else, from other people, and that it wasn’t part of me or of this place. When I saw that, I could let it go. I wondered, “How many fears have there been that I’ve learned to make mine? What am I, just myself, afraid of and what have I been taught to fear?” Maybe in the other life there had been something; here, now, considering it, I could think of nothing.

There were still the questions, and the winter still seemed to me to be the main test of whether or not I would survive here. I had a sense of trial ahead, of hurdles before the end, but I was not afraid, not any more. I thought, “Perhaps it’s courage I’m discovering, maybe that’s the name of it.”