Many Are Chilled, But Few Are Frozen

I was taking a picture of the caves when I felt the impact. All around, it was deadly cold. I’ve always admired the cold, in a way; it’s like an enemy you can respect. Heat invites more of a passive response: all that lounging around and wishing it would go away. With the cold, I could get outside and do something about it. I was still careful of it, though no doubt it could kill me as effectively as being stranded in the Sahara. Especially here, just inside the Arctic Circle. I was there to chase a story involving global warming. I’d heard of a scenario involving the Arctic ice floes melting, maybe all gone by 2020. I wanted evidence with my own eyes. I wanted proof for my readers. I had never been so cold.
It put me in mind of the comparative furnace of Florida. As I stood well-wrapped against the cold, snapping the ancient stalactites, I recalled the previous summer, and the Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire” came to mind. It made me smile. The soft green twilight was beautiful in its own way, the first time I visited there from Scotland. When the rain fell, it was soft and tropical, a distinct pleasure after the heat of the day. It fell like a warm shower, not at all like the rain in Scotland. I shifted my position, and thought of how that relationship had fallen and broken, like the meteorite that had just landed. The Americans know how to air-condition. Perhaps too well. Now here I was, in another continent, in a kind of recovery position. I wondered if anyone had been hurt by the impact of the blast. I was knocked over, but was unhurt. The cold I so admired, particularly, the snow, had cushioned my fall. It was odd in a way, that I could enjoy Florida. Maybe that’s how in love I was: not so mindful of climate. I had even gone down to Cape Kennedy with her, to see where the space shuttles had lifted off into space. Now here I was, on the other side of the old Cold War boundaries. Thinking of Solzhenitsyn, imprisoned in a gulag somewhere near here. It was about time I left my own prison. The sun outside was setting in a crimson glare that would have made Lenin proud. I had not found much conclusive evidence about the permafrost thawing, but my mission had changed. All my reporter’s instincts came into play, trying to locate the news: who had been hurt, what had happened. I almost thought I saw her face in the ice. I discarded the thought like an old coat. Time to move on.