I have always admired the rugged frontiersmen who pushed the bounds of this country.
Those were the old school manly men who trapped furs, hunted for their own food, made their own houses, and explored the place that no one had ever been, and I am not one of those men, it turns out, no matter how hard I wished that I was.
I find this out a little too late, having already bitten off more than I could chew by moving almost as far north as geographically possible. I do really like it here, but feel it may be too much for me to handle as a way of life all year long. Where I used to live my house had a thermostat and a central heating system, and when I got cold I just turned it on, up here the heating system stays on most of the time, and if it ever turns off I need to check on it. It is possible for the natural gas heating system, or more specifically the pipes leading in and out of it, to freeze because that’s how cold it gets up here! In the old days when the heating didn’t turn on I put on a blanket and would start to make a fire because even going a few minutes with no heating can be something you can’t come back from. That is what troubles me the most about living here, the fact that heating is all that stands between me and freezing to death.