Québec City, Canada

Yet when I hear the word Québec I can at first recall only one memory, that feeling of walking through a cold silent street of a sunny winter day, that will forever define my being in Québec. Just an ordinary street in that beautiful old city, it hardly matters which one. The air is as cold as one can imagine but it doesn’t bite like New York cold, nor does it exhaust like the wind-swept sleet of the Great Lakes. It’s the gentle, invisible cold I remember from the Rocky Mountains, that carries a wood-burning smell and a clear, clean light. The sun casts extraordinary shadows onto the cold buildings that seem to press against each other for warmth, and their bright colors and large bricks conceal what is inside. Cheery cafes, musty bookstores and dark, regal churches are all hidden from the world in the best of disguises, so that one may always anticipate a grand reveal when first stepping in. As I step briskly along the narrow sidewalks and cross into the next block, I feel for a moment as though time no longer exists. I am young again, skipping quickly home through the snowy Colorado streets, and I know that just one the other side of the next door my parents await, and our fireplace is glowing, and with one quick gust of wind, I step inside and close out the world behind me.

This essay was written in only one draft in the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov’s essays that experiment in creating a single mood, best known by his descriptions in his autobiography “Speak, Memory.”