Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world. . . .

A sad tale’s best for winter.

—William Shakespeare, in Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale

When I was a classics major at Swarthmore College I lived one year in an off-off-campus dormitory inhabited largely by amateur mountaineers and professional Californians, a city girl among a very outdoorsy set. It was a harsh winter in Pennsylvania that year and for a period of about a month I had to walk the mile or so to campus every morning through abusive wind-swept snow banks, past the modern hotel complex out to the highway, then along Highway 320 past the not-so-far-off-campus dorms and the row of shops that Swarthmore called a town, past the deserted shack it called a train station, through the dark little underpass that led to the College property, and up the long hill path that led to the administrative building where most of my classes in Homer and Virgil were held. Pretty rough country.

The friend with whom I habitually made this journey was a genuine Californian, had done a certain amount of hiking in his day, and