Cold

Before I can describe to you what I do on "the coldest day of the year," I must define "cold." Cold is defined by Merriam-Webster as "having or being a temperature that is uncomfortably low for humans," or "marked by the lack of normal human emotion; friendliness or compassion." These two combined definitions accurately describe not only how I felt one very, very cold Christmas morning in 1974 when I woke up in Anchorage, Alaska to find my head frozen to the wall of a friend's guest room, but also about seriousness of life.
Realizing that I was just frozen to the wall and not frozen to death, I grabbed my frozen, cold damp, stiff hair and began pulling it piece by piece away from the hard frozen wall. We had just arrived in Alaska late the previous evening and this "space" was the only option besides sleeping in our car, which wasn't an option at 30` below zero. The room did have a wood-burning stove, but the fire had disappeared in the middle of the night, and all that remained where the fire once roared were cold, dead ashes, so getting dressed in the frigid cold was quite an experience, a very alarming experience. As I attempted to find warmth where no warmth existed, I experienced what an abandoned astronaut might feel like in outerspace without oxygen--every second was piercingly unbearable. We left without making the bed.
Once outside, we began walking to the main road that connects Anchorage to Fairbanks. Our destination was Talkeetna, a small town about 100 miles away. We had to hitch-hike to Talkeetna because the truck we had driven nearly 4000 miles from Michigan to Alaska had to be returned to the car dealer on or before December 24th. This Alaskan dealership had paid us to drive a brand-new F250 Ford from Michigan to Alaska. We had handed-over the keys less than twelve hours before, but little did we imagine that cold Christmas morning, as we headed North to Talkeetna, that we would see more moose than people and even fewer cars on that lonely, two-lane Alaskan highway.
By the time we arrived in Talkeetna, the day had turned to night. We were frozen-solid cold, in spite of our new Alaskan parkas and Sorel boots. The ice had crystallized in our eyes, noses, ears and mouths, and our feet and hands had little feeling of life. When we realized the apparent danger we were in as the day progressed and eventually disappeared, we began flagging down every car as it passed, and they were few and far between. Finally, a kind man took pity on us, trusted his instincts, and drove us 15 miles out-of-his-way to our destination.
During our "thaw," we sipped hot chocolate, sat by the blazing fire and starred numbly at the red-hot embers. Rather distanced from the day's developments, we found words difficult to assemble. The silence, nevertheless, was noticed deeply in our hearts and minds. I knew in that moment that people never intentionally drown to death in pools of water, or, more importantly, never freeze to death by the side of roads, as we had almost done just hours before, they just suddenly find themselves in an unplanned, uncontrollable situation, a dire and pathetic moment where laughter turns to tears, beginnings to ends and life to death.
Every year on December 25Th, I recall that cold Christmas day of 1974 when the deep, dreadful depths of darkness consumed the daylight and all its living creatures. As I ponder the past, I raise a warm glass and sense that impending chill.

Colleen Klaus