Cold Read Online Free PDF Page B

struggling body, or he might remember strolling away
     from his own prone carcass in the snow. Victims at this point have crossed the line between cold stupid and what is sometimes
     called “cold crazy.”
    Just shy of death, victims may experience a burning sensation in the skin. This may be a delusion, or it may be caused by
     a sudden surge of blood from the core reaching the colder extremities. The last act of many victims is the removal of their
     clothes — the ripping away of collars, the disposal of hats. Doctors sometimes call this “paradoxical undressing.”
    A Nebraska newspaper explained why some victims of the School Children’s Blizzard were missing clothes. “At this stage of
     freezing strange symptoms often appear: as the blood retires from the surface it congests in the heart and brain; then delirium
     comes on and with it a delusive sensation of smothering heat. The victim’s last exertions are to throw off his clothes and
     remove all wrappings from his throat; often the corpse is found with neck completely bare and in an attitude indicating that
     his last struggles were for fresh air!”
    During the School Children’s Blizzard, a seventeen-year-old girl froze to death standing up, leaning against a tree.
    Nebraska teacher Lois Royce wandered through the blizzard with two nine-year-old boys and a six-year-old girl. They could
     not find shelter. The girl was calling for her mother, begging to be covered up. The boys died. The girl lasted until daybreak.
     Lois eventually crawled to the safety of a farmhouse.
    Johann Kaufmann, a farmer, found his frozen children after the storm. “Oh God,” he cried out, “is it my fault or yours that
     I find my three boys frozen here like the beasts of the field?” The bodies were frozen together. They had to be carried back
     to the cabin as one and thawed before they could be separated.
    In Laura Ingalls Wilder’s
Little House on the Prairie,
the horror of blizzards is discussed by children. Laura is asked what she would do if caught in a blizzard. “I wouldn’t get
     caught,” she answers.
    And Emily Dickinson, in “After Great Pain,” seems to have thought of hypothermia:
    As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —
    First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —

AUGUST

    I t is August second and sixty degrees. I watch a fisheries biologist wade into the Beaufort Sea. On and off, he has been wading
     into the Beaufort Sea for more than twenty years, collecting fish as part of a long-term study. He wears chest waders, but
     the cold soaks right through. Even when he stays dry, the plastic fabric presses against his skin, feeling wet. At their best,
     waders in cold water give meaning to the word “clammy.” And at times the waders leak, or they are overtopped by a wave, or
     he steps into a hole and they fill up with ice water.
    I sit in the Zodiac as he boards from water that reaches close to the top of the waders. He rolls across the edge of the Zodiac,
     leaning into the boat and straightening his legs, so that his feet are higher than his head. Water drains from the waders
     into the boat.
    I tell him about the book I am writing. I tell him of my five-minute bath in the Beaufort Sea. He has this to say: “You should
     do a book called
Warmth.
You could do all the background research in Aruba.”
    “What would be the fun in a book on warmth?” I ask. And then it occurs to me: fire walking.

    Some polar explorers stayed warm. Part of their secret was clothing. Richard Byrd, famous for a failed attempt to fly over
     the North Pole and for a successful flight over the South Pole, spent many months in Antarctica. It was during a Byrd expedition
     to Antarctica that Paul Siple hung his water-filled cylinders in the breeze and worked out the principles of windchill. In
     1933, strapped for funds, Byrd overwintered alone in Antarctica. “Cold was nothing new to me,” he wrote, “and experience had
     taught me that the secret of