A couple of days ago, when I was blogging about the wind, Bittersuit asked:
“dontcha ever get tired of the cold?”
I could simply say, “no”, and let it go, but that is not my way, y’know.
When I was a little girl, a California girl, I once saw a thin film of ice on a puddle in the morning. That was a COLD day, for San Jose. I shivered at the thought of ice right out there in the natural environment. I had been used to having the ice man bring big blocks of it to keep our ice box cold in the little house where my parents lived when I was born. In our new house, we had a fridge that produced heat on the outside and made things cold inside it. I didn’t even like ice cubes in my lemonade. I still don’t put ice in water or other drinks. I find excessive cold unpleasant.
A year or two after my father died, my mother and I ended up in Kansas, the state where she had been born. Summers were hot, and heat has always been hard on me. I’ve had heat prostration, sun stroke, sunburn… excessive heat is no more pleasant to me than cold is. It weakens and sickens me.
My first winter in Kansas, I saw snow falling for the first time in my life. I looked around for the smoke and fire, thinking it was ashes flying on the wind. Later that day, I dressed up in layers of clothes, donned hat and gloves, and played in the snow. By the time the novelty had worn off and the cold was perceptible, my lips were blue and my teeth were chattering. The aftermath of that, stiffness, weakness, aches and pains and incoordination, is enough like the fibro flareups I’m now used to, that I consider that the first of them that I remember.
At the school in that town, our playground was on the north side of the building. In winter, that big block of red brick cast a shadow over the entire yard. The Kansas prairie is notorious for its cold north winds. They say the only thing between Kansas and Canada is a barbed wire fence in Nebraska. During recess, no matter the weather, we had to go out there.
The closest thing we had to a sheltered place was beneath an outdoor stairway. There, on a slab of concrete laid down over an old well, kids would pile their bodies up to share heat. For me it was an early lesson in tradeoffs: on top of the pile, one is cold but can breathe. Inside the pile, the warmer you are the more pressure and less air you have. I hated the cold and I feared the kids who reacted to this stranger, the new girl in school who talked fast and had a different accent, with rejection. I’d get pushed out of the pile everywhere I tried to burrow in. I was only acceptable on top, providing cover for someone.
This disorder I have, “fibromyalgia”, ME/CFIDS*, makes me sensitive to cold and heat. Long before I had a name to call it, I knew that cold weather made my whole body hurt, made my muscles tight and unresponsive, and took my breath away. Likewise, hot weather made me weak and nauseated, and short of breath, too. I’m also sensitive to many other things, the most bothersome of which are chemicals: air and water pollution, perfumes, cleaning chemicals, etc. I hate crowds, especially in cities, where many people are obsessed with not smelling like humans. Around here, there is a lot less of the perfume and deodorant pollution, and I like that.
When my friends and I first started talking about coming to Alaska, I feared the cold. I wanted to experience cold before I committed myself to the move, so I spent a winter high in the Colorado Rockies. That story can be found after the prison episodes, in my right module. It wasn’t too bad, was tolerable, so I headed north.
I didn’t know what I was getting into. Comparing a winter in Breckenridge to one in Alaska is apples and oranges. Winters here are both colder and longer. Worse yet, winters here are dark. I wasn’t ready, and my first winter in Anchorage my carelessness born of ignorance got me hurt. That story is in that memoir module on my main page, too.
I geared up for it, became conscious of outdoor temps and weather forecasts as I had never been before. I lived through ten years in and around Anchorage with no more trouble. I learned that I could spend time in the sun up here in summer without getting sick or sunburned. That was ample compensation for the extra care I needed to put into keeping warm in winter. Then we left behind the electric power grid and moved to this quiet, near-pristine valley.
My first winter out here was the worst winter of my life. In abject withdrawal from TV, I managed to rig up a car radio and a 12 volt battery, and I would pull my battery on a sled to a neighbor who had a generator, for charging. Candles didn’t supply enough light to read by, but I didn’t get bored. I stayed busy trying to survive.
We were broke. Years previously, dumpster diving, I had found a melted case of soft yellow ski wax. It had been in our junk pile all that time. That winter, I got some paraffin to harden it a bit, added some old scented candle scraps I’d saved and salvaged from dumpsters, and taught myself how to make wicks and dip tapers. In a dark kitchen corner, by dim candle light, I made dozens of smoky candles for more light.
One of my coping mechanisms for the (then undiagnosed) fibro had been a nightly bath at bedtime, to warm my muscles and relax me. The first winter out here, with no running water and no baths, I wasn’t sleeping well. It took hours for my cold body to heat the sleeping bag enough to relax me so I could sleep.
I had been depressed before, but never to that degree. It was horrible, but I survived. When summer came, I started dreading the coming winter. I was afraid of the cold and the dark. I had always had “itchy feet”, wanderlust, a love of travel, and now it grew into a seasonal migratory urge.
That horrible, squalid, threatening winter was the worst of them. The next winter we had brighter propane lights and could dispense with the smoky candles. I still have one of those ski-wax tapers, but most of them were used up or given away long ago. I kept one as a memento, a constant reminder that no matter how bad things are, they are not so bad now. By the following winter, we had our own little generator, and every week or so I’d start it up to charge the battery for my radio. I developed a taste for high quality news coverage from NPR. I learned to take a hot water bottle to bed with me, and that always helps me get to sleep.
That frightened and depressed winter was nineteen years ago. Doug and I lived in that place for fifteen years and I became comfortable there, though I never lost the autumnal migratory urge. There were hard times and scary times. Surviving them made me more self-confident and less apt to be scared. I developed skills and acquired tools.
Four years ago, we moved in here to housesit for a neighbor one winter. He decided to stay in Florida, and gave us this trailer we live in now, on the power grid. I have a new addiction to the internet and have revived the TV addiction. We had a scary, malfunctioning oil furnace in here the first few winters, then it quit entirely and I had to face the fear of getting through a winter with only the little wood stove in the front room. No problem; in fact I have been breathing better this winter, without those oil fumes in the air.
“Tired of” does not begin to describe my feelings for the cold here. Cold is nothing, less than nothing, just the absence of heat. My body produces heat from the food I eat. I have long johns, warm boots, hats, mittens to go over the gloves I put on over my glove liners when it is really, really cold outside. Insulation to keep in my body heat is all I need to enable me to get out there in it.
Other difficulties of living in Alaska are more troublesome than the cold. In winter, for me the biggest problem is the long hours and months of darkness. In summer, it’s the mosquitoes. At least there are no skeeters when it’s cold.
*ME/CFIDS=myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue immunodysfunction syndrome
Sorlie poses with his lead dogs and wife at the finish line in Nome. He holds the flag of his home country, Norway.
Robert Sorlie won the Iditarod in the wee small hours of this morning. About an hour and a half behind Sorlie, Ramy Brooks got into Nome in second place.
and
and
, so
, what the hell, why not…
Geez! It’s four in the morning here… what am I doing (semi-)awake at the keyboard? Fortunately for the whole household, I woke from the pressure of a dog and a cat who were trying to share a bit of body heat. They were cutting off the circulation in my legs.
The fire wasn’t out yet, hadn’t burned low enough that putting cold wood in there would put it out, but putting the cold wood in the stove did suddenly reduce the amount of heat it was producing. The sane, sensible place for me would be over there under the dog, cat and covers at least until the new wood catches alight and the fire picks up. It’s only 55°F in here now. The wind is howling and roaring through the trees again, sucking the heat out of the house.
The next five mushers are out of Shaktoolik on the way to Koyuk. Four mushers are in Shaktoolik. 
Several people commented on the menu for that gourmet meal Robert Sorlie was served for being first off the Yukon River. This picture of Sorlie enjoying his feast was on 
today. He looks tired and burnt–sun and wind burnt and burnt out. The word from the dog watchers is that his team is “strong.”
UPDATED Iditarod update: 
At right: “Come on! Come on! I want to go right now!”
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