At 6:40 am it was -16 degrees and the wind chill was -26. Whenever I'm tempted to complain about the cold I do, but I also think of the months of -60 and -70 degree temperatures that John Hornby endured on his crazy trips to the Arctic in the early 1900s. I call them crazy, because while I can maybe understand someone undergoing severe but temporary hardship to get a first-hand look at that description-defying Northern landscape, I can't understand why someone would willingly go back a second time. And a third time. And a fourth time...
It wasn't just the cold. The lifestyle was brutal. Leg-hold traps, kicking dogs, punching dogs, killing dogs, Inuit starving, having to eat animals that were mangy and diseased to survive. On his last trip to the North, Hornby took his young cousin with him. (Wikipedia says Edgar Christian was 18 years old, but I thought I remember reading in The Legend of John Hornby that he was in his early twenties. Young anyways.) Along the way another young man wordlessly joined them. John Hornby had spent one winter in the Arctic without taking masses of supplies with him, so perhaps he felt invincible. He didn't seem to be in a hurry to get to where they planned to spend the winter, and because of that, they missed the caribou migration. BIG MISTAKE #1. BIG MISTAKE #2 was not taking any dogs with them. He had decided not to because dogs require too much food, but on the other hand, they can also be a source of food, or transport. So when the three men ran out of food, they had no way out.
Edgar Christian kept a journal, but he was not a poetic man. Maybe he preferred not to romanticize the North. There was no going down in a last blaze of glorious psychelic lights. There was no prescient howling of wolves. There was no philosophical discussion on the meaning of life. There was no soul-searching or soul-finding.
What there was was sickness. The need to go out and hunt in -70 degree temperatures, with no insulating layer of fat left on the body. The disappointment and growing desperation of not catching anything. Frostbite. The occasional small animal, itself diseased and starving, to provide enough sustenance for a few more days of misery. John Hornby finally facing reality and writing his will. The laconic young man remaining laconic until the bitter end. Edgar wrapping John and the other man in blankets and stacking them outside the cabin, a cord of corpses. Edgar waiting for the fire to go out, and the embers to cool. Edgar putting his journal and John Hornby's will in the stove (where, presumably, they would have some protection from the elements, since cabins in the North didn't seem to last all that long). Edgar wrapping himself in a red Hudson's Bay blanket, and lying down for eternal sleep on the bed made by John Hornby.
And always the cold. That bitter brutal cold.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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20 comments:
What does this have to do with Leonard Cohen?
This was fascinating on a number of levels. First, because you don't think that -16 or -26 (is that F or C? whatever it's cold!) is particularly ridiculously cold. I cannot understand why people live in such cold places. Why they didn't/don't migrate to tropical islands.
Second, because I've never heard of John Hornby. Our frozen landscape stories are always of Scott and Hillary and Antarctica.
And to think I was sitting in my toasty 68 degree house this morning complaining very loudly that it was 3 degrees outside.
I have a romantic fascination with the Arctic born of reading one too many Jack London stories as a kid, but I suppose there is not much romanticism in dying of disease and starvation and cold. I can't imagine what a nightmare Hornby's last stand must have been.
mm is trying to gloat about the fact that we have tickets to see Lennie on May 22.
(gloat gloat)
Mali, you misunderstand me, I do think -26 is ridiculously cold (-16 perhaps less so). Those are in Celsius. The Arctic temperatures were in Farenheit, I believe, although at that point it probably doesn't make a difference. And those are without the wind chill factored in. Brrr...
Ridiculously, ridonkulously cold. Zero Fahrenheit (-18? Celcius) is as cold as it ever need be where people live, in my opinion.
My kitchen was 52 degrees this morning.
I'm sure Lennie will keep Helen and mm warm.
Bridgett, do we have the same house?
Helen: Thanks for the reality check. Plus, it was interesting.
And yeah, you guys just go ahead and gloat Cohenwise.
Anything under about 0 deg C is ridiculously cold in my book. I'm all for tropical pursuits.
That damn Deloney he even deleted his ever so amusing comment hence my response.
Yes Deloney, put it back. My nephews don't read my blog, so I don't mind if it's slightly racy.
PS to everyone: Gloat, gloat.
Are you and mm going to throw your undies on stage?
I don't usually wear any.
Don't gloat to me: I've been already :). You will drown in a sea of invisible psychic Leonard undieness. Enjoy. (Kate went twice, by the way)
Sounds like Canadian chilliness explorers were just as stupid as British ones.......
Hey my verify word is: inguinin, which is a cross between Inuit and Penguin, unlike Mr Hornby.Poor Edgar.
Mrs Slocombe, as it happens, John Hornby was English. So was poor Edgar.
That is as it should be: we wouldn't want any colonials trying to one-up our insane pigheadedness: but then if not for insane etc: no Canada, no Australia, America etc etc ; as we know them of course.
and what they keep saying is true: you could get these published in a heartbeat. It's your pith that maketh them.
Why thank you kind sir (madam?)...
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