Alone in the Arctic Cold

Day had broken exceedingly cold and gray, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the slope, where a dim and little-traveled trail led eastward through the pine forest. The slope was steep, and he paused for breath at the top. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed to be a mist over the face of things, that made the day dark. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun.

The man looked back along the way he had come. The Yukon River lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that was the trail that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. He was a newcomer in the land and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to think about man's weakness in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bit of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of thick, warm clothing. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old mine on the left fork of Henderson Creek where the boys were already. They had come over the hill from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o'clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready.

He plunged in among the big pine trees. The trail was faint. He was glad he was without a sled, traveling light. In fact, he carried nothing but the lunch wrapped in the handkerchief. He was surprised, however, at the cold. It certainly was cold, he concluded, as he rubbed his numb nose and cheekbones with his gloved hand.