I was in Fairbanks last week. Temperatures in the Tanana Valley hovered at minus 40. I spent hours in my hotel room holed up with books, hardly my intention when I flew north.
Harsh weather did not slow me as a teenager. I routinely walked home from Lathrop High -- more than a mile -- after school. My greasy hair froze but I suffered no damage because I stopped at the pool hall to warm up.
When I reached the house, my Dad never commented on the ice sculpture on my head. He just shot me a look that said "You're nuts."
My reading at the hotel included Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire."
"To Build a Fire" survives mostly as required reading in high schools and colleges but deserves wider recognition as a masterpiece of compression. In 16 pages London (1876-1916) paints a vivid portrait of a wilderness tragedy. A miner -- a cheechako -- sets out to walk from one Klondike mining camp to another in temperatures of 50 below; he freezes to death after he makes greenhorn mistakes.
The man had been warned. A sourdough cautioned him against the dangers. The man didn't listen, and London as much as says he died from a lack of imagination. He couldn't picture what might happen to him in the wilderness at 50 below.
The story's narrator is the proverbial omniscient author. His voice is the voice of authenticity -- of one who has known 50 below intimately.
When I was a boy, there was an old miner in our neighborhood who could have been in "To Build a Fire" if London had altered the outcome of his tale. The man froze his feet and lost them. He walked all over town, winter and summer, on his stumps, a living reminder of the cold's power over mortal flesh.
I thought of him as I ventured to a friend's house four blocks from the hotel. The walk took 15 minutes. I was cold all the way, even though I was bundled up like the Michelin man.
-- Michael Carey