Flurries-and-frost - Do You Remember Your First Snow?

Arctic Circle Springtime Gothic

Someone looks at your snow pictures. “Must be cold there up North!” You look at the thermometre. Sub-zero frost. “Yeah.” You’re so hot as you stand in the blazing snow field that you feel like the Scottish twitter user, as if ye wrapped yersel up in tinfoil and crawled inty the microwave tae blow yerself up tae fuck.

There is a strange glowing orb in the sky, white and distant. It stays there for over three hours. It hurts your eyes. You no longer know its name, but it does make you see colours you had already forgotten. It follows you.

“Flower!” someone says. “Green leaves and grass!” You stare numbly at the snow. “Running water!” You hesitate to tell them that you haven’t seen even a hint of dry, barren earth in months.

Yesterday you wore three winter coats, leather mittens and a woolly hat. Yes. Today is t-shirt weather. Tomorrow you know you shall need thicker three coats.

rest in peace thomas armitage. died tragically and miserably under mysterious lead-based circumstances in the arctic tundra circa 1848 on a failed expedition only to have your decaying frozen bones get mislabeled, shoddily reburied, have your boyfriends wallet and diary taken away from you to be archived, meanwhile you get gnawed on by various creatures for another hundred years, just to be rediscovered again later and laid out on a piece of plywood from the Home Depot, and then get shoved in a bag which was placed in an acid free box and then shipped to ottawa in the early 1970s just to have some unpaid intern along the line lose your bones. and no one even gives a fuck.

The French Astrolabe and the Zelee caught in Antarctic ice 1838 during the Expedition of Jules Dumont d'Urville, watercolour by A. Mayer 1838

kids these days just want to be on phone. NO ONE is dying at my antarctic research station

“The Ascent”, photo by Mikhail Litvinsky (1970s)

Arctic arches

Sergey Aleshchenko

Greenland, Scorsby Fjord

Scoresby Sund, Greenland

“a grand nautical drama”

On their illustrious 1841 return from a successful first season in the Antarctic which marked Ross’ discovery of his eponymous 200 foot tall ice shelf (among other finds including an impressive amount of dead bird specimens) Captains Crozier and Ross were treated to a well-meaning, but by all accounts tooth-pullingly painful theatrical production by Hobart’s enthusiastic dramatic society. 

Both Crozier and Ross politely (and wisely) declined to appear. Eleanor Franklin, daughter of Sir John, was not allowed to attend as her father “did not approve of the theatre,” but heard enough to recount to a friend that the most unbelievable exaggeration was that “Sir John had hair!” 

It was so bad that surgeon Robert McCormick who had chosen to make an appearance and no doubt regretted it, gratefully concealed himself in a curtained box seat until it was over. 

The Grand Ball hosted on Erebus and Terror–gorgeously bedecked in mirrors, steel bayonet chandeliers, with Erebus’ deck cleared as a dance floor and Terror groaning to the gunwales with food, claret, champagne, and port–no doubt made up for it. 300 guests and both captains danced until six in the morning. The Hobart Town Advertiser gushed that it was ‘quite impossible for any fete to have been more elegant and tasteful.” It became known throughout Hobart as “The Glorious First of June.” 

The next day they “cleaned up the Wreck” with the worst hangovers of their lives. 

Alaska/Far Northern Gothic

You had a neighbor yesterday. You’re sure of it, but when you walk the trail between your properties there’s no sign of their house. You recall their faces, but not their names. The distance between you and the next nearest living human continues to grow.

On the longest night of the year, you wake at midnight to a high noon sun. Its blinding light renders the snow a featureless, glimmering white. You cannot even see the trees.

You visit Barrow for Nalukataq and are invited to participate in the blanket toss. When you come back down, there is no one to catch you.

You open the windows.  Pile snow on your bed. Allow icicles to form on your ceiling. It is still too hot to sleep.

You spy a raven near the grocer’s with an eyeball in its beak. You tell yourself that it must be the scavenged remains of some animal. It couldn’t be human. It couldn’t be your own.

You come back from the outhouse to find the door to your cabin locked. You see movement through the window. You live alone.

When the snow finally melts, you find something that you lost years ago. In another state. Another life. It is something you hoped to never find again.

The river in Nenana has been frozen for years. The Ice Classic continues to pool their bets, leading more and more people to pay in with the hope that this year it won’t roll over. The year passes. There is still no sign of spring.

This year’s Iditarod winner harnessed wolves instead of dogs. They froth at the mouth and drip blood from long fangs. No one but you seems to notice.

Your roommate brushes her teeth and spits out blood. She looks thin, almost gaunt, even though she’s been eating constantly for the last week. It occurs to you that you haven’t seen her boyfriend around lately. She smiles. Her teeth are sharp and cold.

Late one night, you whistle at the aurora. The last thing you hear is the aurora whistling back.