Cold

Cold
      I have always been getting my feet cold or wet! Yes, in my earliest memories of fall and winter, I walked into mud puddles or waded into cold, wet snow over my boot tops so my feet would be wet as all get out when confronted by my angry mother.  It seems that even though I really don’t like cold or wet hands or feet or body, my adventures inevitably get me to a place where that is my destiny.
      As a youngster I would go forth into the winter world dressed in snow pants and scarves and mittens with the strings attached so I wouldn’t lose them and rubber galoshes with the metal snaps that always popped open when they needed to stay snapped! My feet would be as cold as an Eskimo Pie from the grocery store freezer and my fingers were always nearly frostbitten.
      As I grew older I tried to get warmer clothes to ward off the cold and then waterproof boots to ward off the wet as well. Plaid wool pants with lace up ankles were covered by old, hand me down rubber bottomed “leathertops” that invariably leaked at the seams because the previous owner had wore all the stitching loose and they were always two sizes too large.
      When I started hunting in cold, wet weather the rubber knee high boots were the things to have as any good hunter of that era knew. You could wear two pair of knit socks in them to keep your feet warm, which by the way, never worked well for me. I even tried electric socks with batteries but they burned my feet! I resigned myself to cold feet and worked on my cold fingers next.
      As a boy mittens were standard cold weather wear but as I grew older and wiser all kinds of gloves passed through, or rather over, my hands. I tried lined gloves and gloves with removable liners of knit or wool to no real avail against the biting cold of the Upper Michigan winter. I even went back to mittens for a time wearing “chopper mitts” with wool liners from the army surplus store or leather work gloves with knit cotton gloves for inner liners. The problem was also compounded by trying to shoot with gloves or mittens on; it just didn’t work. Many of my right hand gloves had a strategically placed hole at the base of my trigger finger so I could slip my finger loose to shoot.
      As I aged, the improvements in footwear and hand wear introduced me to waterproof man-made gear that was supposed to solve all my problems. I still got cold feet and my fingers seemed to be permanently crooked at times but that just may be my imagination.  The chemical packages of hand warmers and foot warmers came along and were tried with a little success but I still seemed to never quite warm up in the winter. Over the years I have resigned myself to a life of cold and I find, more often than not, I stay where it’s warm by the fire instead of running off recklessly into the freezing winter where I live.
      I must be the rare oddity to live in a place where winters are often harsh and to come from a long line of ancestors from the northern climes of Scandinavian countries but I seem to be a cold weather person who should really live in a warmer climate! So I have been sitting here watching the weather outside and it’s about 25* with a light snow falling. I suppose the windchill makes it a little colder but that’s OK. I have four hundred 255 grain lead bullets and several hundred primed cases along with some Trail Boss I want to try so this weather is about perfect for reloading!