Fifty Below at Tetana

by THEODORA C. STANWELL-FLETCHER

NOVEMBER 13. — At first I was greatly perturbed because the bedroom window in our cabin wouldn’t open wide. I come from a family of fresh-air fiends, and I supposed no one could sleep in health without a good gale blowing through the room. J., impervious to my protests, instead of fixing the window so that it could be thrown open more fully, bored three holes — the size of a human eye — in the bottom, and made a panel which could slide across one or all of them. Though I go to bed each night in an indignant state of suffocation from lamp and tobacco fumes, with only three holes to let in fresh air, I must admit I wake each morning more than refreshed — in fact chilled stiff. It seems that even a tiny stream of air, if sufficiently cold, creates enough draft to provide a perfectly healthy amount of oxygen.

November 14. — The sun sets now behind the mountains at 3.00 P.M. After sunset yesterday we came in from our chores outside and sat by the roaring stove over our usual cups of tea. J. insists on afternoon tea no matter what or where, and it is a habit that I am rapidly acquiring. I’m learning that afternoon tea means much more than just drinking tea and eating sweets. Here it means warmth to the body and rest to the mind, congenial companionship after a hard or lonely day. To me especially it means security, for after tea we are both safe at home until another day.

As we drank tea and reveled in our homemade easy chairs, the daylight faded and the world was locked in the silence and glittering snow and moonlight of the early northern night. Then, suddenly, outside came a burst of rippling notes. Birds, singing a clear, sweet song on a bitter night with the temperature at zero and two feet of snow! It couldn’t be possible. But the music was still there, now just above the cabin roof, now down over the lake.

Wo rushed out bareheaded and there by the open water patch below our bank were three fat little gray dippers, or water ouzels, with short bobbing tails. A pair were around early this month, but they did not sing. Neither of us had any idea that any bird ever sang at night in the depths of winter, much less a northern one. In vivid moonlight we could see them distinctly dipping and bobbing on rocks in the cold shining water — and singing. Their song echoed back and forth so that all the lake was ringing with it. When we went inside again the birds flew above our roof and poured their music down on us. No European nightingale, singing in a hot, lush summer evening, ever wove the spell of enchantment that the dippers did with those crystal tinkles, which matched so perfectly the icy purity of the winter night.

November 24. — The snow is now over three feet deep, and the thermometer drops a little lower each day. On several mornings lately it has been 15 or 20 below. Three pairs of dippers are now with us constantly and we’re beginning to believe that they intend to stay all winter. They’ve become our greatest source of music and gay company. The colder it is the more they seem to like it. They spend most of their time in open patches of water below the cabin or around a near-by point.

For a distance of at least thirty yards from shore where the deep springs gush out under the banks, the lake is still unfrozen. The temperature of the water doesn’t seem to be affected by the temperature of the air. The water stays at 38 degrees F. whether the thermometer outside our cabin reads 32 above or 20 below.

Here the dippers swim and dive and hunt for insects along rocks and pebbles on the bottom, or float on the surface like miniature ducks. Sometimes they dive down in one spot, swim far under water, or below an expanse of ice, and come up in an open hole thirty feet away, as dry and merry and sparkling as if they had never been near the water. Their aquatic skill is remarkable, and their powers of flight no less so. When they tire of swimming or feeding, they fly high in the air, over our cabin or above the forest, singing as they go and chasing each other in endless games. And they spiral down from the sky, showering music, like the English skylarks. They sing on and off all through the day and often some hours after dark, as they did when we first heard them. They are quite tame and friendly. When I go to the lake for water, one always flies over, perches on a rock near-by to sing, or begins to feed.

On the twentieth J. collected a northern shrike (our second one) feeding on a red-backed mouse which it had just caught; the mouse was still warm. I prepared the shrike for the Museum but, though the mouse skull was still intact, the skin was too badly torn to make up. We’re determined to stick to our vow and collect two or more specimens if possible of everything for purposes of correct identification. With the birds, which we love especially, it is easier to collect a new species as soon as we see it before it becomes a real friend to us. Moreover, when a new bird appears it is well to get it at once, for we never can be sure how long it will stay, or whether it will reappear ever again.

The first time we saw them we also collected one of the dippers. Now, when I remember the small plump body which I skinned, I can understand how dippers keep warm and dry in icy waters and bitter weather. The uropygial gland over the tail, which the birds use for oiling their feathers, was unusually large; the feathers themselves seemed exceptionally oily and therefore could not easily become wet. Beneath the skin was an almost continuous layer of dense fat that must be a real protection against cold. The stomach was full of half-digested water insects. The remarkably strong, well-knit little wings accounted for the dippers’ skill in both flying and swimming, and no doubt made up for the lack of webbed feet possessed by most water birds that swim as continually as they do.

A tame female American golden-eye duck now spends all day in the open water along with the dippers. She is a sweet thing with her sleek red-brown head, orange-tipped bill, and yellow topaz eyes. She too dives and splashes merrily in ice water when the temperature is far below zero.

J. has begun to snare varying hares, or snowshoe rabbits. He makes a little loop at the end of a piece of wire and hangs it across a rabbit runway. The rabbit runs into it, the branch from which it is hung snaps up, the loop tightens and the rabbit must be choked to death instantly, for there are never any signs of a struggle. Apparently these rabbits are cannibals; we sometimes find a dead one partially eaten. All around the carcass there are nothing but other rabbit tracks and bloody patches where they’ve placed a bit of their brother’s flesh to feed on. The Indians say they have frequently noted this same occurrence on their trap lines.

The rabbits are lovely-looking things, their huge cushions of feet covered with the soft pale yellow fur that acts as a snowshoe. The thick fur of their bodies, light brown next the skin but white on the surface, is soft as down and is shot with delicate pencil marks of black, and their big ears are edged in black velvet. Their faces have small tan markings, and their eyes are large and brown. They are far lovelier than the insipid pink-eyed white things sold as pets. I’m beginning to fancy an evening cloak of snowshoe rabbit, with a collar of white, black-velvet-bordered rabbits’ ears! J. has sworn that I shall have enough skins to make a short coat, anyhow.

J. is collecting a series of rabbits for the Museum. Supposing they would be a pleasant change from the tough, strong old moose meat, we tried eating several. Their flesh is sweet and tender like dark chicken, but oh, the smell! It reminds us of the most disgustingly odorous type of sewage. J. skinned one, and I cleaned it, but we were both so nauseated that we could scarcely swallow it, even after it was cooked. We shall give up eating rabbits unless we are actually starving.

In summer, snowshoe rabbits are brown, but now they blend so perfectly with the snow that we seldom see one alive, though there must be hundreds judging from the tracks which are like those of an ordinary cottontail with very big feet. Once, when I was sitting on a stump, I saw one under a willow against a snowbank. I must have been looking at it for ten minutes and never would have noticed it except for the black edge of one ear.

November 26. — J. saw a strange sight this morning: a snowshoe rabbit swimming in the lake just beyond our bank. It went in leaps and jerks, with great thrusts of its hind feet, and swam out with apparent ease for about forty feet toward the golden-eye. When it was within eight or ten feet, the duck paddled aloofly away, looking as though she weren’t sure what to make of it. By the time J. called me the rabbit had turned and come back to shore. When we went out, floundering in deep snow, we could see its tracks leading down to the water where it had apparently gone in with deliberate intent, coming out later on the bank in the same spot. There were no tracks of any other animal.

November 30. — We’re out of meat again except for bacon and a few canned things. For a time we managed to get Franklin’s grouse, but they’ve become very scarce. Moreover their meat is horribly strong because they must now feed exclusively on evergreens, since there are no longer buds and leaves of deciduous trees. Instead of grouse flesh we feel as if we were eating spruce bark; their crops are crammed to bursting with spruce needles.

J, is able sometimes with the .22 to shoot small white fish that come into the open water below the bank. Trout seldom run up into this lake — probably it’s too shallow and lacks sufficient food — and are confined to the river. But one morning we found a six-pound Dolly Varden, nicely cleaned and decapitated, lying on an icebank by the springs. It had probably been left by an otter, and we appropriated it promptly, with best thanks. It made us three good meals.

Most of all, we long for fat. Nothing here seems greasy enough, and we pour grease out of a pan on bread or even eat it plain. Our bodies, which use ever increasing stores of energy, are apparently preparing themselves properly for the mighty cold to come. We have plenty of butter, which keeps indefinitely in sealed tins. But even butter, in addition to bacon grease, is not enough. J. says we must have fat meat, which only a moose can provide. At this season moose are fat, for their bodies too have been storing up for winter.

J. now spends day after day out hunting. He usually goes east beyond the valley of beaver ponds because moose tracks are more common there than elsewhere. He won’t let me go with him, for, if he gets on the track of a moose, I can’t travel nearly as fast or as far as he can. So I stay at home, trying to occupy myself usefully while he’s away. Several times he’s been gone until after dark. I find that doing a big baking of yeast bread or washing clothes is the best way to absorb mind and energies, but — I’m scared stiff all the time he is gone! I’m always stopping to look at the weather and listen for shots.

We’ve agreed that two shots fired close together, in a series of two, will be our signal of distress. As the day wears on, I get into a fever of listening and waiting, unable to settle down to anything. This sort of thing, far more than a lack of meat, is wearing me thin. J. always tells me the general direction he expects to travel but, when one chases a moose, one never has any idea in what direction the moose may finally lead one. He says “don’t worry” if he doesn’t come back one night, but to wait until well on into the next day before I start to search for him!

December 7. — The ever increasing depth of snow makes the land ever more beautiful, and makes us more and more hard work. There are now five feet on the level, and still the snow comes down every few days. It falls straight, in dense quiet clouds that suffocate us. It’s like a giant flour sifter being turned on, and off, and on again. There is never any real wind and almost as soon as it clouds over flakes begin to fall. In five minutes the mountains, the forests, the lake, are blotted out; there is nothing but a white whirlpool beyond the windowpanes and we are living in a world made solely of the space within four walls of the cabin.

Every sound is muffled. Our voices seem to come from far away and we’re inclined to shout at each other. Sometimes it makes us feel as though we were living under water. Even in the deep sleep of night we can never escape from the sensation that it is snowing. And if we wake, we feel the way one does when, rising too slowly after a long dive in deep water, one struggles for breath. When I was a child I could never have enough snow. Safe in a well-heated house, the more snow, the more I rejoiced, and the more security I felt. But this is something different. The very quietness and persistency of it all is somehow ruthless and frightening.

“The only thing that keeps us from being buried alive,” I often say to J., “is the cabin. How can animals live in this? What on earth happens to Indians out on a trap line miles from home?”

Then J. tells me about the terrible blizzards of the Arctic tundra, where snow, unhindered by hills or trees, is blown by sixty-mile gales over the flat expanse, and no man or beast can live through it unless he stays under shelter until it has blown itself out. But J. says the deadly stillness and monotony of snowfalls here is far harder on the nerves, though less fraught with danger.

In a world so completely white (even the dark green of woods is now hidden under heaped-up snow) one might suppose there would be a monotonous lack of color. But the snow is always reflecting lovely shades from sky and clouds, red and gold and green of sunrises and sunsets, blue and purple lights and shadows. And the little open water patch of Tetana is a mirror for the sky.

Many of the tallest trees are bowed nearly double under the great weight of snow, but it is surprising how few of them ever really break. Always, after a storm, before the fresh breezes appear to chase the clouds away, a gentle stir comes, only a breath at first, that sways the trees softly, and frees them gradually and carefully of their terrible burden. When one constantly watches the workings of a wilderness one comes to know that things are cared for with a surprising orderliness and steadfastness — it would seem with definite purpose. It gives one a sort of faith, and a deep, abiding comfort.

As soon as the snow stops we open the door, climb into the snowbank outside, and begin to clear out the entrance and caches of wood. We now have another shovel which J. made from a pole and the sides of an old box. The windows have continually to be dug out to let in daylight. And one or both of us pull thundering masses of snow off the roof because we’re afraid that the weight (so much greater than we ever anticipated) may break the rafters. If snow is allowed to remain on the roof long enough for the heat from the cabin to melt it, it turns to ice and becomes impossible to scrape off.

We can’t even step outside our door any more without snowshoes. Snowshoes are as essential a part of walking as one’s own two legs. Skis are not used in this country. The snow is too deep and soft, the forest too thick and extensive, and no traveling on the mountains is done until spring. When the snowshoes are not in the cabin being dried off (it’s important to keep the webbing dry so that snow won’t stick to it and add extra pounds of weight), they are stuck upright in a drift, and, as we go out, we step directly into them.

We have three pairs of snowshoes, bought last fall when we came through Takla. They are larger and quite different from the flat snowshoes used in the eastern United States, or the little round bear paws which are all that are necessary in the Arctic. These have high upturned toes and the webbing, except that directly beneath the feet, is very fine and breaks easily. The turned-up fronts and fine webbing are necessary in this climate, for the snow is so soft that flat pointed toes would trip one and coarse webbing would let one sink far below the surface.

Our snowshoe trails are beginning to radiate in every direction. They’re covered constantly by fresh snow, but if they’re not neglected too long, we can usually find traces of them. Since there is little wind, the snow seldom drifts and sometimes there is a faint depression to indicate a trail, or we can feel with our snowshoes a certain hard line underneath all the fresh snow as opposed to the softness on either side. We try to reopen the trails after each new storm, and we’ve marked them by big blazes chopped as high up on trees as we can reach. Walking on a trail that already has some sort of firm foundation is the only way to get about. The snow is so deep and fine that it’s an exhausting business to go through it even on snowshoes.

We are completely cut off; for it would be impossible to travel more than a few miles a day on an unbroken trail.

This is a dead world. Even the clear throbbing silence that we knew at first is muflled by the deep snow that blankets the trees. When we walk in the forest, we feel as if our ears were stuffed with cotton. I’m more terrified than ever of being separated from J., for we’ve discovered that even a loud pistol shot can’t be heard a quarter of a mile away, and shouts don’t carry for more than twenty yards.

Now there are practically no signs of animal life. When snow in this country is too soft and deep for man to travel, it is also too difficult for animals. The squirrels, except for two that haunt our feeding station, seem to have retired permanently to winter quarters. There is not a marten track. Even the moose, with their long legs, have evidently found the snow too deep, for they appear to have left this region entirely. All the little mammals have retired to subterranean passages ‘way below the surface. By setting traps far down, under old logs and stumps, we are still able to catch mice and shrews.

But we begin to wonder if our sole contribution on winter habits of animals in forests of the North is to be a statement to the effect that all but the smallest either leave the country or go into a state of hibernation and hole up completely.

December 11. — The very few birds and animals that have stayed around the cabin in the depths of this great winter are becoming our warm friends and comrades. We all share a common bond in the hardships of intense cold and deep snow. The crumbs and scraps of food that we can save from our own meager meals, we put out on the snowbanks. The tiny chickadees, the Canada jays, puffed into soft gray feather balls against the cold, and the two squirrels, now await our every emergence from the cabin door in hopes of food. The birds are so eager that they have begun to fly directly to our hands and shoulders. The dippers, feeding on an apparently inexhaustible supply of water insects, still make lovely music and play in the open water along with the friendly little goldeneye.

During the day the sun stays always in the southern sky; it passes across from southeast to southwest. It doesn’t come up till half-past nine in the morning; by half-past two in the afternoon it goes down behind the Driftwoods. Soon after three it’s dark, and we come in, light our little coal-oil lamp, pile up the stove, and settle down for tea and games, reading, writing, or skinning soecimens. Our eyes, which once grew tired from reading by bright electric lamps, never seem to grow tired here, though we read far longer than we ever did at home. J. is going straight through the rather fine print of Shakespeare’s plays.

After supper, when dishes are washed, I wind the clock and cross off the calendar. This is a ritual followed religiously at the same time every night. If one day is neglected, we might never find it again. But we are becoming surprisingly efficient at telling time by the sun without the aid of watch or clock. We are not nearly up to the Indians, however. Even on sunless days they seem able, nearly always, to tell the correct time within half to three quarters of an hour. We have tested them by our watches over and over again. J. fills in a daily weather chart; this serves as a check on the clock and calendar. We sink down then in our chairs, moccasined feet stretched to the stove, with sighs of sheer joy in the certainty that nothing will disturb us. For by twilight in winter every living thing must be holed up safely in order to survive the cruel night.

When the spirit moves us, say about once a week, we take a bath. I mean a real bath in the washtub. J. packs the tub with snow and sets it on the little stove (which it almost obliterates) to melt. A full tub of snow becomes one third of a tub of water, or much less, depending on whether the snow is solidly packed, or dry and light. We keep adding snow until we have the desired amount of water. When the water is hot, we set the tub on the floor and proceed. Since there is some slight feeling over which of us shall have the first bath in clean water and which the second in dirty, we take turns. I am just able, by sitting with knees drawn up to my chest, to squeeze my whole body into the tub. J., at least twice as large as I, must hang his legs out. He feels rather bitter about this. We scrub each other’s backs because the slightest turning projects a flood across the cabin. Nothing is softer and sweeter than snow water, and we always use one of the two cakes of lavender soap for these special occasions.

No one need suppose that, because we take tub baths rather rarely, we go dirty! I have never felt cleaner in my life. There is no dirt, anyhow, in this great pure snow world to make one feel unclean.

Dressed in a few, warm, lightweight clothes, I’m always delightfully comfortable, warmer really than I ever was at home in winter. I wear light wool “long-handled” underwear, woolen ski pants, shirt and sweater, and three pairs of wool socks and a sort of light slipper, which we made from pieces of Hudson’s Bay blanket, under the moose-skin moccasins. Ever since cold weather set in we have worn moccasins exclusively just as J. predicted. These are as soft and flexible as chamois skin and so light I feel as if I were going around barefoot. As long as they are dry, my feet keep warm all day, even when I’m out in deep snow. Tight, or stiff, shoes that bind the toes in the slightest degree are useless. This costume, with the addition of a parka, wool cap, and two pairs of mittens (woolen ones inside and moose-skin outside) when we go out, seems to be exactly right even in the coldest temperatures, which, so far, have reached 38 below.

Thanks to J.’s instructions I’m learning countless little wrinkles on how to care for clothes in winter. Every speck of snow must be brushed off before it has time to melt in the warmth of a cabin or campfire. Sometimes one spends five or ten minutes scraping snow off moccasins (above all, moccasins), trousers, jacket, and cap with a big knife, stick, or mittens.

The fewer the clothes, the more freely and lightly one’s body can move and hence the warmer one is. But one must have two sufficiently woolly layers and something windproof for outside. To pile on additional layers, however, is a great mistake, either when dressed for outside or going to bed. Extra clothing in bed, I find, not only hampers the circulation, but also prevents the heat of my body from warming the sleeping bag around me. Going to bed without any night clothes on, as the Eskimos do, is really the warmest of all. J., reverting to the days when he traveled and camped with the huskies, often goes to bed stark naked. I’ve tried it and it works well — until morning. Getting out of bed naked, with the thermometer inside the cabin at zero, or below, is just too rude a shock.

Christmas Eve. — Today we were greeted by a cold snap — just in time for Christmas. It is brilliantly clear and the mountains stand out once more — so distinct that they seem almost on top of the cabin. After supper, when stars were flashing above the snow piled to within a foot of the top windowpanes, I went outside to view the world.

“You won’t feel cold,” remarked J., “at first, but watch your lungs.”

As I opened the door I wondered what he was talking about. With the first breath, I knew. I choked and gasped and sputtered. In this temperature one’s breath freezes as one inhales and less oxygen than usual is taken into the lungs. Except for this, I simply was unconscious of the cold. By taking little short breaths I found that I could breathe sufficiently well. The snow underfoot was so hard that it didn’t seem like snow at all. As I stepped on it, it tinkled musically like pieces of metal striking together.

In these very low temperatures, the air is crystal clear. Over the absolute stillness of the icy night, the stars looked as though they had come alive. These were not the serene, peaceful, far-off stars of summer skies; these were flashing and sparkling and burning, fanned by invisible fires to dazzling life. These were more brilliant than I had ever seen them anywhere, in the tropics or on high mountaintops; the light they shed across the earth was as revealing as clear moonlight. The white lake, the white mountains, the white forests, were glittering in their radiance. When I realized suddenly that I was almost too stiff to move, I went in, and J., who has seen before the sky of an Arctic night, smiled in understanding at the expression on my face.

Christmas Day. — Last night when we went to bed the windows on the inside were covered with frost an inch thick; the logs in the walls, and the shakes in the roof cracked like gunshots, as they were split by the cold; and out on the lake the ice kept up an almost steady booming, interspersed with the horrid ripping and tearing that always makes my spine tingle. During the night I was waked repeatedly by such terrific cracks in the logs that I thought the cabin was coming down on our heads. When the temperature is falling, we expect a drop of 15 or 25 degrees during the night, beginning at sunset, but last night it broke all records.

This morning I was the first one out of bed. These days I can hardly wait to get up. Whether this is because I’m always hungry, or because the night is so long, I don’t know, but it is refreshing to be able to jeer at J. as he lies lazily abed with his morning smoke. Although when we went to bed last night we piled up the stove with slow-burning green wood, this morning the fire was practically out. It was still dark outside; dawn had not yet begun although it was long past eight. The windows were so densely frosted that it seemed as if daylight, even if it were there, could never penetrate the cabin. I lit the lamp, then carefully laid the pile of shavings, as always unfailingly prepared by J. the evening before, in the front of the stove and applied a match. After which I delicately laid on more shavings and then larger and larger sticks. Everything was ice cold and I was careful not to touch any metal with bare hands, having learned from bitter experience that skin, especially moist skin, freezes fast and is sometimes peeled right off at the slightest contact with very cold metal. Still clad in bathrobe and slippers, I went to scrape away the frost and read the thermometer outside. I realized then that, although I didn’t feel chilled, I could hardly move my arms.

“I’ll just see what the temperature is inside first,” I thought, and went to peer at the thermometer hanging above our dining table. It read 25 below. Gosh! That couldn’t be right! How could we sleep like that, how could I be wandering around with only a wrapper on? I must see what it was outside!

I couldn’t even find the mercury. It dawned on me, after a time, that it had gone its limit and jammed at 50 below. My exclamations roused J. and we were so busy arguing over the thermometer that we forgot to say, “Merry Christmas!” I was convinced that if the mercury could have gone beyond 50 it would have read at least 60 below. J. said it was not much colder than 50; that he could tell from past experience in the Arctic just how many degrees the temperature drops when it gets beyond 45 below. For one thing, if it is 55 or more below, when hot water is poured out of a window, it freezes solid before it reaches the snow level. I could hardly wait until we had hot water to try this experiment. Sure enough — when, later, I poured a stream from the teakettle onto the snow outside, the water steamed and twisted into threads, but did not turn actually solid till it reached the ground.

After a breakfast of canned grapefruit which we had been saving especially, and pancakes with the last of our syrup, also preserved scrupulously for Christmas, we did our usual chores. I cleaned the cabin and began a round of baking. In addition to bannock, which I bake daily either in the drum oven or in an open frypan on top of the stove, I made tarts of strawberry jam and a chocolate cake. As these favorite articles of diet make inroads on a meager supply of Crisco, jam, and sugar we have them only for very special celebrations.

When I went outside to scatter crumbs for our furred and feathered friends, the jays were almost too stiff to move. Instead of flying down to snatch the food before it left my hand, they sat on the spruce branches, their feathers so fluffed up that I could hardly distinguish head from tail. Sometimes they moved near the smoke from our stovepipe, which was giving forth some warmth. The chickadees, tiny as they are, though also tremendously puffed out, were slightly more active than the jays.

Toward noon the temperature moderated enough for us to enjoy a tramp. That is, it had gone up from 50, or whatever below it was, to 36 below. Our snowshoes tossed up clouds of crystals. Young trees which, in autumn, had reached above our heads had been completely covered with fresh snow, so that they were transformed into great mounds and small hills. Wherever we looked our eyes were dimmed by the twinkling brilliants scattered before us. The azure of the sky above, the unsullied whiteness below, the mountains and the woods, the intense pureness of the air, were exhilarating beyond imagining. And there was not a sound or a motion, anywhere, to distract our senses of sight and feeling.

Soon after noon the temperature began dropping again, fast. Our faces, which we rubbed constantly with wool mitts, began to show a tendency toward frostbite, and J.’s right big toe, once badly frozen in Arctic tundras, was starting to pain severely. So we turned homeward.

As daylight faded, the rays of the sinking sun tinted the snow with red and lavender. The mountains grew purple and then came that period which, if I could make a choice of the wonders of all the twenty-four hours of a winter’s day, seems the most wonderful of all. It is that moment of white twilight which comes on a particularly clear afternoon, after the last colors of sunset fade and just before the first stars shine out. I don’t suppose its like can be seen anywhere except in the snowbound, ice-cold Arctic places. Everything in the universe becomes a luminous white. Even the dark trees of the forest, and the sky overhead, are completely colorless. It is the ultimate perfection of purity and peace. But even as one looks and wonders, the white sky takes on a faint pale green, there are the stars, and then the great winter’s night is upon one.

We had our Christmas dinner at five: dehydrated potatoes and onions and a bit of moose steak, especially saved and tendered, baked in a pan with stuffing. For dessert there were the jam tarts and chocolate cake. With these vanished the last vestiges of Christmas, the things which made it a little different from our other days.

Have we greatly missed the things that make Christmas Day in civilization? Other human beings, Christmas carols, wonderful food? I suppose so, but I think that this lack is more than made up for by the deep contentment of our healthy minds and bodies, by our closeness to and awareness of the earth, and of each other.