There are nights.  Nights when the moon hangs low, casting long shadows that stretch like old secrets.  Nights when you step outside and the cold freezes your thoughts in place and vibrational shivers radiate down your spine.  This was one of those nights.  The northern lights were sulking behind a low ceiling of cloud, refusing to perform for tourists.  The only light came from a half-hearted moon and the faint ember of the joint I had rolled just before landing.

Not long after claiming my only bag, I was standing outside a reindeer herder’s cabin that hasn’t seen paint since the Winter War.  Wearing every layer I owned except the one that actually mattered, my ears were staging a full revolt.  That’s when it appeared like a brain freeze hallucination in the middle of the night. 

The Midnight Beanie was as black as the inside of your pocket at midnight in a power outage, and was knitted from yarn so dense it could probably stop a .22 if you believed hard enough.  Fleece lining thick enough to stash an old school ounce of trees, I slid it over my frozen skull like a verdict: guilty of underestimating Scandinavian winters... sentence commuted.

Instantly, the wind dissipated.  My ears, traitors that they are, sent word to my central nervous system that they were open to negotiation again.  I pulled the beanie lower, my eyes only slightly visible, because one size truly does fit all when survival is on the line, and felt, for the first time in hours, the luxurious sensation of blood remembering it was supposed to circulate.

I’ve worn it since on a night ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm while the Baltic tried to murder us with sleet and icy waves.  Wore it on a rooftop in Chattanooga to smoke a J, as the temperature dropped twenty degrees in ten minutes, forcing the hipsters to scatter like startled pigeons.  Wore it the night I finally won the affection of the Spanish actress who snuggled in tight as we walked the empty late night streets.

Some men have signature colognes.  I have the Midnight Beanie.  It has absorbed the smoke of a reindeer-camp fires, the salt of northern seas, and whatever cheap bourbon I spilled in my own attempt at being the most interesting man in the bar.  Despite this, it still only smells like midnight itself: fresh air, pine, and pure possibility.

It's the kind you wear in arctic forests.  The kind you wear when wandering unfamiliar streets at ungodly hours.  It's the kind of beanie that makes strangers wonder what secret society you might belong to.    

Yours for $24 online at hiATMOSPHERE.com (because shipping is a harsh mistress), or slip into our downtown Chattanooga store where it can be yours for a flat $20.  Either way, when the world decides to turn the thermostat to “ice age,” you’ll be ready.

The Midnight Beanie. Because some nights refuse comfort in anything less.