I recently traveled to Turkey where I floated in a balloon over sandstone fairy chimneys, slept in a cave, tried to eat politely at a table just 10 inches off the floor and climbed and crawled in the pre-dawn up 6,000-foot-high Mount Nemrut to see monumental stone heads carved there more than 2,000 years ago. I did not steam in a hammam (a Turkish bath) because I had been soaped and sandpapered in one in Morocco last year.

PATAGONIA — 7 a.m. I wake up to the shrill of an alarm and roll over on my top bunk, releasing the warm pocket of air underneath my big wool blanket. With half of my body hanging off, I manage to pull back the drapes and take a peek out the window at the snow-capped mountains surrounding the quaint village of El Chaltén. I use my hand to wipe away some of the fog and dew on the window. The weather and visibility are the only two things on my mind at this point. Raining or snowing? Cloudy or clear? Cold or frigid?

I’ve been granted my wish for winter snow — albeit accompanied by temperatures of 10 to 12 degrees midweek. That was what the thermometer registered early Wednesday morning when I chose to walk. Even my adventurous, well-furred yellow cat declined to go outdoors as I set out, intelligently preferring the warmth of a bed to the frigid outdoors. On Tuesday, the day after the snow fell and temperatures were warmer, he had happily snuffled about in it. That day I had followed my usual route through the West Tisbury woods past Glimmerglass Pond.

With the snowfall on the night of Jan. 21, I was a bit slow getting out to feed Thunder the next morning. I had defrosted the hummingbird feeder first and fed and watered the ducks when I looked up to see a huge black boar heading toward the beach right into the force of the frigid wind. Thunder was out of his pen again! Grabbing a pot that held the remains of my chicken soup from the night before, I ran out calling his name. The wind off the water, even though warmer than inland air, had stopped him in his tracks.