Writing about extreme cold, by Elizabeth Kay

We find it relatively easy to write about what we see and what we hear – and smell and taste are important when it comes to food. C.S.Lewis was well aware that food is the way to a child’s heart before puberty strikes. But what about sensation? Touch, temperature, proprioception? When you're so numb you don't know where bits of your body are in relation to other bits? It’s very important as far as pleasure is concerned, and also pain if you’re writing a torture scene, but describing extreme heat and extreme cold need a bit of thought. How easy is it to remember what it felt like, when you’re sitting at your computer in a centrally-heated room? Jumping into a pool whilst on holiday somewhere hot brings immediate relief, along with cold drinks and ice cream. I’ve found it’s quicker to cool yourself down than it is to warm yourself up. Wrists and ankles are key – run your wrist under a cold tap and you can feel the cooler blood travel down your fingers. The fad for leg warmers in times gone by wasn’t a bad one; they’re very effective, all scrunched down round your ankles. But that’s prevention rather than cure. Warming yourself up when you’ve been very cold takes time.

It does help having a home-grown
fur coat

          I used to go for holidays to hot places, reckoning that the British summers were something of an anti-climax. Two extracts form the wonderful Flanders and Swan substantiate this:

In July the sun is hot
Is it shining? No, it's not
August cold and dank and wet
Brings more rain than any yet

           Thanks to global warming it’s been a bit different recently, with concerns about reservoir levels although there’s the downside of floods. But at the chilly end? Here in Surrey we have had no snow whatsoever this winter, and precious little last year. I tend to feel we haven’t had a winter at all unless there’s been at least a few flakes. The last decent snowfall here was in 2010. I’m a bit of a fan, despite having a few mobility problems these days. There’s nothing that changes the landscape like snow, it’s transformative, beautiful. So I thought – time for a holiday somewhere a bit arctic. I’d been to Iceland and Greenland and Norway, and marvelled at one day when it was -16⁰C for an hour or two, when your glasses ice up and you need crampons just to walk down the high street. That was the coldest ever for me, in Greenland. But I had my base layer and my Norwegian boots and it was fine, so confidently I headed off to Finland, certain I would be very well kitted out. Yeah, right.

          An hour after breakfast on the first morning in Ranua, I realised I’d been very wrong. The resort had a big store of arctic onesies, which you could borrow at no cost, so I did, wore it over the top of everything else, and was not sorry. Apart from the night I had a horse-drawn sleigh ride with five others out into the wilds, and the temperature dropped to the coldest so far of the entire winter, -34.5⁰C! I have never been so cold in my life. I didn’t shiver from the cold, I shook. Everything seemed to shut down. Thinking was an effort. One of the other passengers had to have her boots removed and her feet warmed by the guide when we reached the halfway point. There, a fire was lit, and we all had hot drinks. On the way back I had to constantly wriggle my fingers and toes, despite my wonderful possum wool socks. But I did remember what my husky driver in Greenland had advised 

– keep shrugging your shoulders. And it does work – a bit! We all had scarves or neck gaiters to keep our faces warm, but the downside is that they get damp, and ice up. I suppose the upside is that you know it’s only going to last as long as it takes for the horse to retrace its steps, so there is an end in sight.

          I know that if I’ve been sitting at the computer for a while and become unaware that the heating’s gone off it takes me a long time to warm up. But the Finns know what they’re doing, and the chalet in which I was staying was heated to a constant temperature that never varied, and the heated clothes dryer cabinet was amazing. Nevertheless, I filled the hot water bottle I’d brought with me, made a hot drink and I felt normal again in a remarkably short period of time.

          Cold is a killer, and it’s time to worry once you stop feeling cold. I didn’t get to that point, but my feet did get cold enough on another day to stop feeling any pain when my feet slid forward in my boots and crushed my toes. It was only when I got home that I noticed the nail on one of my big toes had gone partially black. A bruise rather than frostbite, but I was completely unaware it had happened. The other long-term effect was in the tips of my fingers, especially my thumb, which keeps splitting and is very painful. My pharmacist tells me it’s a common reaction to temperatures like that. Moisturise, baby, moisturise! My camera didn’t like it either, and the batteries ran out very quickly. I didn’t catch on to the trick of carrying your spares inside your outdoor clothing, as close to your skin as possible, until it was time to go home. And one of the thin plastic gaskets on my camera fractured. It didn’t affect the performance, but I imagine it’s a dust protection.

          I’ve just looked back at what I wrote about cold in Jinx on the Divide, the final book of the Divide trilogy. At the point I had only been to Iceland, where it had been ok to be outside in the snow in just an Icelandic cardigan.

 

…Felix was aware that he was shivering before he was aware of anything else. He opened his eyes and sat up. He realise he was sitting on snow, so he got to his feet…It was getting dark – and it was bitterly, achingly, lung-crushingly cold. Her hugged himself to keep warm, and blew into his hands. His breath swirled out like puffs of dragon smoke, dense and white. He’d put on his warmest parka, but it was about as effective as a plastic bag…

 

Well, not bad. Apart from the fact that blowing on your hands introduces moisture, never a good idea when Jack Frost is king. So my advice is the same as ever – if you’ve experienced something a bit out of the ordinary, write it down whilst the memory is still vivid. You may never use what you’ve written for ten years (that’s happened to me!) but when you do need it it’s invaluable. Personal experience triumphs over the internet every time.

Wolverines have good fur coats too.