“Talk of your cold! Through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail”

It is hellish cold. Winter is here. It started around thanksgiving with the first dusting of snow. At first it would go above freezing in the day. But then it stayed below zero. Pans of ice began flowing down the river. They moved past much more slowly than the logs in the spring. The water level in the Mackenzie dropped significantly as well. The edge of the river retreated twenty feet or more. Now there is more ice than water in the river, although it is weeks away from being solid. Remember that in two month’s time, eighteen wheelers will be driving across the Mackenzie.

It doesn’t really snow here. I miss the big fat flakes of the east coast. Instead it just gets so wickedly cold that any moisture in the air freezes and clings to the trees or falls to the ground in small particles. You don’t need a shovel to clean off the steps. A broom is much more efficient at brushing away the dust. And the powder that forms has yet to pack down. You can’t make a snowman with the snow that is in my yard.

I broke down and bought gloves the other day. God knows we brought fifty pairs with us, but I’ll be damned if I can find any of them now. I bought them after a quick trip to the warehouse to grab a few boxes of Christmas decorations. My fingers got painfully cold very quickly. It was -20 after all. The gloves I bought have a rawhide outside and a fur pile inside. My boss warned me that the fur would get crushed and inefficient before long. He recommended wearing gloves inside mittens. Mittens are a must, because individually wrapped fingers can’t keep themselves warm. But when you do need those fingers, you can take off the mittens and still have the protection of the gloves.

Everyone talks about the “dry cold” of the north. Living by a river that has yet to freeze, I can’t say I know what a “dry cold” feels like. Apparently, once the river freezes, it won’t feel as cold, although it will technically be colder. I don’t care what the humidity is: minus twenty is cold.
The days are getting noticeably shorter now. Even with daylight savings, the sun doesn’t rise until twenty to ten. It seems to come out of the south-west, instead of the east. It then does a slow, shallow arc through the western sky, hanging over the river. It never rises above 45 degrees from the ground. Go outside at twelve noon and it feels like late afternoon. The frost in the air causes sun dogs to form on either side. It then sets in the north-west before five.

At night there is usually a white ring around the moon. The stars don’t simply twinkle; they seem to change color, with flashes of red and blue so noticeable that Nicole and I spent five minutes one morning trying to decide if it was a star or a plane we were watching in the western sky.

While these atmospheric displays are amazing, they are forgotten when the northern lights come out to play. Tonight the lights are a still, green glow stretching towards the north. Two long trails of light merged into one directly over my head. On other nights they look like a shimmering curtain. There’s a line from a song that rings true whenever I see the lights.

“the northern lights give a ghostly glow
It’s hard to tell if they’re really there”

The only adjective for this light is ghostly. Any other light you see at night either comes from the moon, or from man made lights. The northern lights are not tied to either of these. They are visible without illuminating anything else. They don’t rely on the moon or stars for their light. The stars are still visible behind them. You can’t say for certain where they begin or end because they are always moving. All you can say for sure is that they are there. They are indescribable, so I’ll stop trying to describe them. But I will say this: no picture will do them justice.