Saturday, November sixteenth.
Still it blows, yesterday and to-day, cold, clear, and blue,—and the moon these nights stands straight above us and stays till dawn, setting far in the north. It is really cold. Olson is quite miserable and wonders how we can keep at our wood cutting and skating. But I think I shall never live in such cold again as in that first winter on Monhegan in my unfinished house when on cold days the water pails four feet from the stove froze over between the times I used them, and my beans at soak froze one night on the lighted stove. We love this weather here. While the cabin is drafty I pile on fuel remorselessly, and that’s a real delight after having all my life had truly to count the pieces of coal and wood. The ice on the pond is six inches thick, part of it clear black that one can see the bottom through. This morning Rockwell changed to heavy underwear. He complains always of the heat, day and night.
The days go on about as usual varied only by an occasional weekly or monthly chore and success or failure in my painting. This morning with Olson’s help I brought my boat up onto the land above the beach. The boat is an extremely heavily built eighteen-foot dory with a heavy keel; and yet the wind carried it four feet last night and, if it had not been secured, might have blown it down into the water where the waves would soon have wrecked it. This night I shall not read in bed; it’s quite too far away from the stove.