The park bench was cold and hard against him. The chill seeped through his woolen coat and the layers of clothes underneath and leeched deep inside him. His body was tense, too tense even to shiver. The wool itched him on the few spots it touched his bare skin: his neck, the spots on his wrists that his gloves were too short to cover.
The bench was by the side of a blacktopped path which led through a sparsely wooded area. The bank of a frozen lake lay on the opposite side of the path, visible through an opening in the trees . The lake stretched away into the foggy distance. A small, tree-covered island lay near the center of the lake, and a few lonely seagulls sat on the surface of the ice nearby.
As the path led off to his left, the trees grew more and more closely together until they swallowed the path completely. The brown and grey trunks were bare of any leaves, reaching up toward a sky the color of slate.
There were so few colors available for the eye to discern that anything which contrasted with the uniform blur of neutral tones immediately popped out. The few evergreens visible behind and between the other hibernating trees, the discarded beer cans half-buried in some weeds near the frozen edge of the lake, the man’s own bright red wool gloves. Off in the distance, beyond the little island in the middle of the lake, near the opposite shore, a few people had braved the cold to ice skate.
The path by which the man sat was well-traveled when the weather was more agreeable, but at this time of year, few ventured here except out of necessity. This was one of the main reasons the man came here now. The solitude, the starkness, the extreme temperature, all spoke to him in a way which a living green space filled with families, joggers, bikers never did. The lack of sensory input forced his mind to work harder than it would if there were interesting things to observe. And he felt the need to force his mind to work harder than it had been lately.
A stiff breeze came from nowhere and stole his breath. He cupped his gloved hands over his mouth to warm the air until he could breathe again. Then he stood up and shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets. His back muscles tensed against the cold. He huddled as far down into his coat as he was able and walked slowly down the path toward the woods.
