This is the first story from my walk. Read the next one here.

It was freezing cold.

As I exited my house into the dark and windy night, I made sure to bundle up. I threw on a sweater, a winter coat, a hat, and my trusty leather gloves.

The leather gloves lost my trust, as they weren’t very warm. With each step I took, I lost some sensation in my hands. An hour into my walk I was unable to wiggle my fingers.

To circumvent this, I decided to add some more spring to my step. More motion in the arms leads to more warmth in the arms.

I entered my favourite park with some new found energy. Warmth started to enter my fingers, but it wasn’t substantial. I felt pain on the horizon, so I decided I needed to either turn back home, or take drastic measures.

Then, I had a profound idea.

I pulled the tips of the gloves off just far enough that I would have enough space to close my hand into a fist.

I did this with each hand. My hand was – in some sense – hugging itself for warmth.

I was walking around this massive park, by myself, and yet I had felt oddly special in being privy to the true states of my hand.

From the outside, my leather gloves remained rigid in the contour of a hand. The gloves looked like they were completely occupied by my hand.

The inside, however, told a different story. My hands were, in fact, not laid out straightly. They were, instead, using the gloves as a shield for their own intimate experience – the fist, that is.

I felt giddy, and on reflection perhaps delusional – with the secret only I was privy too. A passerby, while none in sight, would think I was just a regular person, with some regular gloves, walking regularly. They wouldn’t know about the warmth party that was taking place inside my gloves.

Then I saw the footsteps.