The heat is on, and I get the urge for going

I turned on the heat in the house this week.

It got to be 50 degrees in the house, I figured it was time.

Had I had an office to go to, I might have been able to delay the inevitable. But I'm a stay-at-home freelancer now so not delaying the inevitable was inevitable.

As a rule, I try to delay touching the thermostat as long as possible for two reasons:

One, the heating season here in northern New England is terribly long, about seven months from sometime in October to sometime in April. That's a long time to be paying heating bills;

Second, the physical act of turning on the heat means that pre-winter has arrived.

But here's the worst part: I may have turned the heat on a little earlier this year than I did last year.

In fact, with every year I age here in the sub-tundra the earlier I have to heat the house. I think there's an axiom that I may be able to quantify: For every year I ago, I turn the heat on five days earlier come October.

I don't know what it is about growing older that makes us less able -- mentally as well as physically -- to deal with cold. Is our blood thinner? Is our mental toughness softening?

I'm a person who through his life has looked forward to winter. I look forward to the skiing and the college hockey season. Any New Englander will tell you there's a rhythm to the seasons that gives our lives a changing landscape of not only of how things look but how they feel and smell.

For example, a McIntosh apple fresh from a tree in the fall is far superior to the McIntosh you buy in a store in July. It's a taste of the season.

But every year there's a greater battle for me to mentally prepare for the cold, snow and ice.

It's at this time of year that I thumb through my songbook of music I've collected over the year to play the Joni Mitchell song -- popularized by Tom Rush -- "Urge for Going":

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town;

It hovered in a frozen sky and it gobbled summer down;

When the sun turns traitor cold;

And all the trees are shivering in a naked row;

I get the Urge for Going but I never seem to go.

I remember seeing a sign on Route 1 in southern Maine several years back. It was the dead of winter. The sign on the closed shop simply said: "Winter well."

Those of us who have the urge for going but never seem to go can hope for no less.