How does a northern hemisphere grrl remain cook on a blazing Southern Hemisphere day?
She remembers a trip by train to a remote township on the shores of Hudsons Bay.
-43 is what the MEC zipper thermometer said as she and Her One and Only stood at the shoreline (which you couldn’t really distinguish from the frozen Bay) looking toward the Arctic.
Only eyes and lashes showed but she could feel them freezing within moments. Every sound (of which there weren’t many) was crisp and shattering. Everything except the occasional worn side of a shipping container homestead was white white white.
The only signs of life were inside the library/gym/rec centre where a large white cockatoo sat rather absurdly in a cage within.
The soles of her boots were frozen solid.
The cold hurt. It ached.
It felt like a hell of a lot of work to remember there were less bleak places a few hundred kilometers south. Well, not that much less bleak – we are talking about Winnipeg here. Where he hostess had to take a hair drier to the pipes to get the shower water flowing.
The heat in the antipodes sometimes feels like a wall.
The cold in that place was like a cell – it had four walls, a top and a bottom.
It was hard and sharp and forbidding.
And amazing in some way that has never left her.
1000 days 