The waters of White Clay Creek glisten in the cool sunlight. When the sun hits my face, I feel its warmth, but as soon as I turn away it’s gone. I’ve always had a great disdain for winter. I am not meant for the cold, and I hate the way it locks me inside my house. No number of coats or gloves could ever make it comfortable. Haskell explains why this is such a difficulty for humans because we “evolved from apes that lived for tens of millions of years in tropical Africa…we are condemned by our skill with fire and cloth to be forever out of place in the winter world” (Haskell, 20). This makes sense to me, but I wish it wasn’t true.

Why then, are some of us so comfortable in the cold? Sure, my roommate and I would both perish if left in the cold long enough, but while I hate any breeze of frosty air, she prefers it thoroughly over the summer heat. If we have heat-coping mechanisms (sweat), but the cold is more likely to take us down, why do we have different preferences in this way?

I turn toward the sun to soak in as much warmth as I can. It’s low in the sky, angle sharp and bright, but without a huge punch of heat behind it. At the same time, the water looks refreshing, and I get the uncharacteristic urge to leap into the creek to take a swim. I would never, of course, but the thought is amusing. Not too long ago, I was driving past joggers in White Clay on the side of the road, running without shirts and sweating heavily. From inside the temperature-neutral car, the world appeared a summer day, maybe in the afternoon. The sun seemed like it could scald my skin if I stepped outside my car. Yet standing here by the creek, it seems comical to believe it could be warm, the sun angle too low, winter too obvious.

The breeze is light, barely noticeable, but it steals bits of warmth from my skin. I wonder about my ancestors, most likely Scandinavian, Irish, and German. How could they have lived there for so long they have identifiable traits of those areas and still not be adjusted to cold weather. To live in the cold in such a way seems like a death wish. I’ve often thought of moving south when I’m older, to avoid the harsh winters of the mid-Atlantic.

It seems strange for me to hate the cold so much. The cold is natural, part of nature, part of the way the sun warms and cools the earth. A balance is needed. At the same time, the cold to me is the enemy of life, of survival. The areas the sun rarely touches are barren, covered in frozen water (the life-giving fluid), where only the hardiest survive, similar to the bottom of the ocean. How did my ancestors find their way to north Europe? Why?

I understand my ancestors’ journey to America was a socially-driven survival move, but what about the concept Haskell discusses, of previously-apes moving north from Africa? There are so many questions I have about the path of humankind and the world. I have a thirst to know more, to understand everything. I will never know everything, and I may never even know anything. But the curiosity persists, creating new questions where questions go unanswered.