Cold is relative

*Nuuk Snow Festival

We lived in Darwin for some years, where the day-time temperature is thirty-two degrees year round. Only the humidity changes. The biggest variations come in the dry season, when the evening temperatures drop. Thus, on one June evening by the grassy foreshore, soft waves brushing the sandy beach nearby, I found myself reaching for a woollen jumper and bracing myself against the chilly evening air. It was nineteen degrees celcius.

It was the same in Nuuk last week. People started muttering about it being a bit cold when it hit nineteen. Minus nineteen that is. That’s also cold for me. In temperatures below about minus fifteen, I start to feel thin fingers of cold creeping in through the seams in my down jacket, curling tendrils of winter winding up my arms and around my neck. In those temperatures, even my thick insulated and fur-lined boots can’t hold back the insidious advance of the frozen air for long.

But at least we’re still talking celsius here. A few years ago, I’d finished some work in Calgary and was eager to hit the ski slopes in Banff. Day one was cold, but manageable and I felt ready to take on more on day two. So I was at the slopes early. But by ten o’clock the lifts were still not running. What’s the problem? I thought, looking through the enormous windows at the magnificent snow beneath a clear blue sky, the weather’s fine! I’d checked the forecast. It was minus nineteen. Cold, but not too cold. So as soon as the chair-lift started, I was out there, with what seemed to be surprisingly few people. It was a long run and I was perhaps only one third of the way up, alone on the lift, when I started becoming concerned. It was really cold. The seat beneath me burned with a frozen intensity. My winter clothes seemed almost useless against the frigid air that surged through them. At the top of the run, I stood for a minute rubbing my hands, my face, trying to regain some warmth, some circulation. And then I realised that it wasn’t working and I just had to get out of there as fast as possible. I started skiing. But about a hundred metres on, I had to stop, desperately beating my hands to find some warmth, readjusting my ski goggles, my hood, my scarf, trying to cover every crack where the frozen air was creeping in. It was a slow, painful descent, stopping over and over to try to bring back my circulation. At the bottom, I abandoned my skis and burst into the crowded chalet where reluctant skiers were hunched over mugs of hot chocolate. It was only then that I realised that it wasn’t minus nineteen celsius. It was minus nineteen farenheit – almost minus thirty.

Back in Nuuk, I walk to school with my son’s gloved hand clasped in mine, a chill breeze whirling powdery snow around us as our boots crunch-crunch in the packed snow. And he asks me, “You know what I like better about Australia than Greenland?”

“What’s that?” I reply.

“You can’t freeze to death in Australia.”

And while that isn’t true, I understand where he is coming from.