Why someone would live in Jackson, New Hampshire, in the dead of winter is an issue that is stranger and more depressing than I am currently willing to explore. We’ll just accept that anyone can make a mistake, and that there was once a point when I willingly offered myself to that bleakness. The air temperature had not risen above negative 10 degrees, and usually hovered around minus 30. It was even worse on top of Mount Washington, the peak I looked at every morning through the glass door of my basement apartment—an old, kitschy ski chalet that I shared with an uncontrollable man-child, the “F-bomb,” Freddie Wilkinson. On the summit, there were 100 mile-per-hour winds and the air temperature was minus 80. Father Winter was banging on our window. He’s a drunk, angry sonofabitch on a good day, but on that morning, he was in a rare mood. Neither Freddie […]