As I write this at 1:30 in the afternoon, it’s a sunshiny sixty-degree day.

But the wind is already up to twenty, twentyfive, and there’s unsettled weather in the air. I am not just talking meteorology, either.

Once it dumps the main snow on the mountain tonight, it’s going to accelerate to highway speeds across the flat scrublands that pass for my home in these dark and sober days.

So fast, in fact, that there’s talk that the air might not have time to freeze out here. It may start as a torrential rain. Which might be far worse, if it does freeze eventually as predicted. Black ice.

I won’t be going west into it in the morning as I’d planned. Not with a truck I don’t know well yet.

Lingering in the gusty air is the unspoken opinion that I’m being far too cautious.

Maybe.

I took my paranoid ass to the grocery instead of the gas station.

I’m looking forward to hunkering down as the atmosphere howls darkly.

Yes, home is where the heart is. Eventually.

Tonight, home is simply where the hearth is, and that’s more than good enough for me.