He takes off his shoes first, as usual. He carefully unlaces them, the better to put them on when he is through; it is a ritual, after all, not codified stupidity. The socks he places next to them on the ground, their laundry machine purity dingy against the unbleached fresh snow. It is as he unbuttons the fourth button of his outer coat that he feels the first real tremors of cold, as the residue of warmth from his house and the socks are washed away by the tiny eddies of air wrapping themselves around his feet and splashing against his ankles. He savors them, these first overtures, as he gently shrugs off the parka, looks thorugh the trees at the empty white sky, the sun devoured and scattered by the featureless clouds.

The parka stands upright for a moment, rigid for the impression of a wearer, before it crumples sideways with a slight crackle. His zippered jacket comes off quicker. It is here that he must always consciously force himself to keep his pace steady, to remember his purpose, as the cold passes through his shirt like oil through a sieve. The joy comes then, too, from his now tingling feet, trilling up his spine, his body answering with a trembling shudder. The delicate time has passed now, and he feels no difference on the surface of his skin as his shirt comes off, and his chest and arms taste the raw air. His dulled fingers wrestle with the top button on his pants briefly before falling back into rhythm again.

He breathes deliberately, his whole body breathes as he steps out of his pants, then out of his boxers, his breath appearing then disappearing like a chimera or a mystery, or life itself. The trees, they are now sacred somehow, silhouettes and monuments, he almost feels as if their tips are within reach again. He pulls the skin apart at the top of his sternum, and it splits easily to the bottom of his abdomen, the two flaps hanging at his side. He is shivering now in earnest, and his ribcage expands defiantly, a trace of blood tracing his thigh, then his shin. The joy comes almost between shivers in a silent call and response, arpeggiating down the length of his arm, to his fingertips. He can feel the air both in his lungs and on their surface. The clearing is a smaller place now, as the snow begins to fall again, his body more than naked, raging against winter.