Think it’s cold out? Think again.

2/13/2007

No matter how cold it seems to get, it will never be as cold as it was “back then.” How far back good ol’ back then might be depends on who you are talking to.
I will tell young people that it was so cold back in my day, we kept a bucket of salt beside the toilet, and on really cold days I walked to school with the toaster in my pants.
My Dad used to say it was so cold back in his day that they hauled all the food out of the freezer, and huddled inside it to keep warm. He said, on those really cold days, you had to kick a hole in the air just to get outside.
My Grandfather used to say it got so cold back in his day that words sometimes froze in the air. If you wanted to hear what someone said, you had to grab a handful of sentences and take them inside by the fire. It got so bad that Grandpa’s shadow once froze to the ground and, when he took his next step, it snapped right off.
Around the turn of the century, a young writer named Jack London penned a classic short story “To Build a Fire” about a man who ventures out into the bitter cold of the Klondike. Here is the Reader’s Digest condensed version:
Despite warnings about travelling alone in the extreme cold, a young man and his dog make for camp in the middle of deep, dark winter. It is so cold on the trail that every time he spits his tobacco it freezes into his beard, and forms a shelf of hard, yellow ice on the front of his chin.
The man ignores the old timers who know better, and takes the trail that winds along the riverbank. Not surprisingly, he soon slips down the bank, breaks through the thin ice at the edge, and almost instantly freezes his feet.
His only hope of survival is to build a fire, which isn’t easy, because his fingers become numb and useless after mere seconds of exposure to such unforgiving cold. Our hero isn’t completely inept, however, and soon has a warm fire blazing for himself and his trusty husky.
Unfortunate in his haste, the man builds his fire under a tree. The heat from the flames melts enough snow on the branches that a huge drift comes tumbling down and smothers his fire. Not good. It’s over, and he knows it.
He tries to start another fire, but his fingers are so numb that he ends up burning all his matches in one burst.
He also burns his fingers until they are black, but it hardly matters now. He can’t feel anything anyway.
The man decides camp can’t be that far away, and tries to make a run for it, hoping his blood will thaw him out and he will still be able to salvage half of his frozen face.
His will is strong, but he quickly stumbles on his frosted feet and careens into the snow. Not even his dog will go near him at this point, and his daylight is nearly done. The sun will not be up for a long time, and neither will he.
“To Build a Fire” is considered one of Jack London’s finest stories. It paints a starkly realistic portrait of life in the north; a life where it gets so cold you swear you really could kick a hole in the air. It should be required reading for anyone who thinks it has been a little chilly of late.
Read a story like that, and you will never complain about the cold again.