As a chill rain falls and I curl up on the couch, swaddled in three layers, I wonder if my cold training project is working as I hoped it would. Since early fall I’ve been on a mission to be less of a ninny about winter weather, to work outside in temperatures I wouldn’t have dared to before and thus train myself, little by little, to be more comfortable in brisker breezes. 

The premise is simple. In these Covid days, to be outside is to be free. But to be outside in winter requires a tougher skin that the one I was born with. Cold training to the rescue. 

My model in this is the filmmaker Craig Foster, who began free driving without a wet suit in cold South African waters in order to win the confidence of an octopus. In the film “My Octopus Teacher,” Foster describes how he gradually acclimates himself to the water and, as a result, is able to share the life of this shy creature in a way that wouldn’t have been possible had he been more fully clad. The message: Discomfort in service to a higher ideal is not only bearable, it is noble. 

I’m nowhere near this point, of course. The most I can hope is to keep the heat set at 65 instead of 68. But, I tell myself, every little bit helps.