"DRIPPING NOSE, FROZEN TOES, COLD BONES"
[2/19/2025]When I first moved to Edmonton, I was told by many, many locals how cold it was going to be come January. A couple of them exaggerated - "Be ready for when it gets down to -40°C... it's so cold that it froze my doorknob!" A few more told me that it probably wasn't going to be that cold, realistically - "-40°C? Who told you that? Hasn't been that cold since the '90's!" Well, it's February now, and it's the supposed last day of a three-week long cold snap. Every night, it's gotten down to -32°C, and boy, am I hearing about it from all our neighbours who still have old windows..
My fiancé is mostly not a fan, but he survives. He's used to being out on the range during those 110°F Idaho summers, spending the whole day surveying junipers and sage grouse by hiking up and down those dusty dry hills. I, for one, never got used to those Idaho summers; I'd melt like a snow-person when I'd sweat every day sitting next to our busted AC in the bedroom after work. Even those balmy summers on Vancouver Island, where you could never hide under the shade of a tree from the hot humidity in the air, never got terribly hot to the point I'd take refuge by the fan. Yet my fiancé somehow would always come home with a smile on his face under a big hat, and a tan on his arms under thick layers of sunscreen. I still don't know how he does it!.
But these winters up here are unlike what both of us can handle, admittedly. I'd surely thrive in a cooler, wet climate, where I could throw on a light jacket under a stormy drizzle, like by Stanley Park in Vancouver... those days never got too cold, even if my teeth would chatter. But it's not like here. Here in Edmonton, the cold... it surrounds, it suppresses, it probes, it interrogates, it chokes; a claustrophobic cold that will explore every inch of the sacred self trying to find a way in and steal the warmth of one's soul. On our anniversary, when we decided to visit a skating rink during the day, we left the apartment sorely underprepared. A thin scarf couldn't stop a small breeze from stinging my eyes, where tears I'd cry would then stick to my rosy cheeks and freeze to my already fogged-up glasses. When looked at my fiancé not a minute after exiting the building, his beard was already white with frost. Yet somehow he was still smiling through frozen teeth!.
I don't mind this cold too much, at least on the days without wind. For the occasional sunny day we go on the occasional sunny walk around and across the North Saskatchewan river, frozen solid as it is. The sun hangs low over that endless white trail, casting sharp shadows of bridges overhead, while whatever isn't obscured is prone to potholes in the ice where the river peeks out to remind us that it is still there underneath the tarp of packed snow. Besides the trickle of water and the sounds of birds, I'm always delightfully surprised at how quiet this city is. The romantic scene brings a smile to my face that feels good when my cheeks are hot and red..
Even after finishing the zine last month, I'm still thinking about how people manage to live here. Not just the people freezing at the LRT station next to me in ripped jeans, or my friend who bikes to work in a heavy jacket, or even those crazy guys in shorts who run outside instead of on a treadmill; I also look farther north, to indigenous people and inuit tribes who are honest-to-God just straight truckin' it out in the Arctic circle right now. I even look farther back, to the Voyaguers who (often aided by indigenous people, don't get it twisted) were sitting in a canoe straight truckin' it across all of Canada on a river - these same rivers! - to make a living. How have people been here for thousands of years?.
My question is rhetorical, and hopefully doesn't sound like some unknowledgeable and misguided mysticism. I'm learning what I can about the people who have lived here and are still living here, in Edmonton, in Alberta, in Canada, in general, on Turtle Island. It boggles my mind to stand in the snow freezing my butt off and knowing this is somehow someone's element. I'm privileged to have jackets that I just bought from a store, and food that is bought from a store, and a little box that I live in with an electric heater. Sure, I've sewn clothes before, I've been camping before, I've been hunting before, but not in this unyielding cold! How does anyone get anything done? How is there a whole damn city here? Even caribou can handle this better than me, because they're made for this! Who am I to pretend I can do what a caribou can do better, and for so much longer than me?.
A grumpier and more tired part of me rambles on this woeful way every time I come inside with dripping nose and frozen toes. I tear off a thousand layers of cloth to reveal sore muscles and cold bones aching for the relief of a wool blanket. I now realize with acute awareness I did not make that blanket myself. I do not complain.