Until the Night

From the Blue Notebook

The headwind had driven us closer to the shore of Axel Heiberg, an island rich in glaciers and one I knew well. It provided the dedicated researcher with everything the Arctic offers: desert, ice cap, meltwater ponds and icebound lakes. Mountainous in the centre, much of it is also just above sea level. Not so many years ago I had taken cores from the Midden Ice Field, walked the Crusoe Glacier to its terminus and observed its new meltwater stream, which had only just started flowing. I discovered vast deposits of dead ice that had lain hidden for centuries beneath layers of tundra and soil—evidence of a previous glacier, and a glimpse into the far recesses of planetary time.

Rebecca and I were now drifting south of Iceberg Glacier, the only one on Heiberg that reaches the sea. But we were staring at thirty metres of open water that separated us from the pro-glacial gravel of Heiberg. Thirty metres we had no way of crossing.

The terror of hypothermia welled up in me. The fact is, few of the nineteenth-century explorers who came to grief did so by freezing to death. They were killed by scurvy, by malnutrition, in some cases by lead poisoning brought on by faulty canned goods. They had the assistance of Inuit hunters who knew the landscape intimately, whose hand-drawn maps may still be used to advantage, and whose clothing has never been bettered, except in terms of weight, for keeping the cold at bay.

The temperatures Rebecca and I faced were by Arctic standards not severe. As far as I could judge, the temperature swung from perhaps minus ten Celsius to a few degrees above freezing. But we were improperly dressed. Even so, the human body maintains its warmth very well until other factors come into play—wetness, which we had so far managed mostly to avoid, hunger, exhaustion. We had been walking for hours, without food. Our core temperatures were moving downward, and hypothermia, despite the layers we had salvaged from the dead, was imminent.

There’s a promontory just above Strand Fiord, I said. Pack ice tends to jam up there—we may be able to make it to shore. If we can do that, we can make the LARS camp.

Rebecca’s face was grey and there was a blue tinge to her lips—not a good sign. She nodded silently.

I pulled out the radio and scanned for transmissions. Nothing but the gasp and crackle of solar storms. I pulled the aerial out full and pointed it in the direction of the LARS station. It is sometimes possible to reach receivers normally out of range by doing a cloud skip or strat skip. There was small hope of success, but I put out another mayday all the same.

I don’t know how long we walked after that. Polar conditions do nothing good for your sense of time. The fog had gone, but without time, one has no idea of distance. I knew we must be near Strand Fiord, but not how near.

Eventually, yes, there came a moment of luck. We were jammed, not against the shore, but up against another floe. The fit was not perfect, but we found a place where the gap was about four feet, perhaps a little less. That may not sound like much, but the surface was slush and we were ragged and worn.

How’s your long jump? I said.

We can’t. The edge will snap.

It’s multi-year ice—you can tell by the blue. It’ll be a couple of metres thick right up to the edge. Do you want me to go first?

I don’t care.

She was shivering violently, her body becoming less able to generate heat.

I decided to go first. That way I could grab hold of her if she had trouble on the far edge. We both knew that even a few seconds of exposure to that water would mean death.

If I fall, she said, hold my hand if you can, but don’t pull me out.

You’re not going to fall.

We moved back a few metres and without preliminary I took my run. Landing on the far side, I stumbled forward and my hands and forearms plunged into slush—a sure sentence of maiming by frostbite. Then Rebecca ran toward me and leapt the gap and I made sure she crashed into me so she couldn’t fall.

We tore Ray Deville’s shirt into pieces to wrap my hands and forearms, and set off again. We made landfall in less than an hour. The tabular floe had been forced well up onto the rocky shore, and it didn’t take long to find a spot where the drop to the gravel beach was not too high.

If we can make Strand Fiord, we can make LARS, I said. This time of year there’s bound to be someone there. Even if there isn’t, it’ll mean shelter, supplies.

Rebecca said nothing.

Did you hear me?

What? Yes, I heard you, she said, but she remained still, staring at the gravel. She was shivering again, and I held her close and rubbed her arms. My own arms, particularly the left, were going numb. Heiberg is a forbidding landscape—from our present vantage point it was nothing but gravel and bald rock—but the feel of dry land under my boots was encouraging.

Come on, then. Let’s move. You go first. And I want you to talk to me.

I’m going to die, Kit. I’m going to die and I don’t feel like talking. I don’t feel like walking either. I just want to lie down.

I made her walk ahead of me and browbeat her into talking. She told me about some places she had lived—a farmhouse in Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, a small room in a house she had shared with five other people. She spoke of the colours of fields, the million hues of green and gold, and she told me of a split-log cottage she and Kurt had rented one summer on Georgian Bay, and about the white sparks that seem to fly off Lake Huron in certain seas, certain lights.

I wanted to keep her talking so that I could judge her state of mind. She talked well and coherently over the next two or three hours. Even as she wept.

It’s not me that’s crying, Kit. It’s just my body. It’s so cold, my body. It’s never been so cold.

You mentioned another house you shared. Who else lived in the house? Where was this house?

Ottawa, when I was a grad student. One night I came home late—everyone else was away for holidays or something. I came home and the landlord was there sitting in the dark. He thought I might be lonely, and I was, but he terrified me.

Gradually Rebecca’s mind began to wander. One minute she was telling me about a cat, a childhood pet, I think, the next about a man—a fellow student?—who used to dismantle his motorcycle and bring the engine into the kitchen to clean it.

Sounds like Wyndham, I said.

Yes, Wyndham was there. And Kurt too, eventually. Everyone was there.

In Ottawa.

Well, yes. I mean, I think so. What did I say?

Her rambling might have been just exhaustion, but I kept her talking, and it was more than that. A sign of deeper hypothermia. We had two possible sources of heat: the flare gun and the BIC lighter I carried everywhere to warm up frozen locks and so on. There was nothing resembling firewood. And Rebecca needed internal heat at this point. Using my lighter and the remains of Ray’s shirt, we might have melted some snow and heated it and drunk it, but we had no receptacle, no cup, no can, nothing.

We were both extremely thirsty. A casual camper may eat snow for water, but that would have meant lowering our body temperatures even further. We came across some meltwater in the hollow of a rock and lay on our bellies to sip from it. It had been recently warmed by the sun and, while cold, it was far from freezing.

Rebecca’s confusion came and went. Sometimes she thought she was alone and would suddenly stop and call for Kurt. Other times she spoke to me as if I were her father or brother.

Remember the time Mom took the boat out and got lost? Will Nana be coming this Christmas?

Then she would look at me, eyes aghast.

The wind was not strong but the numbness had spread to the backs of my hands and into my wrists. We stopped in the lee of two striated ice blocks and Rebecca pulled my arms into her clothing to warm them.

I don’t want to steal your heat, I said.

You can’t. It’s already yours.

We lingered too long this time and fatigue all but devoured us. We had been walking for a day and a half with nothing to eat but a few cough drops and some pieces of Aero bar. We ate the last of them now. Then I started up the slope of a smooth rock formation and Rebecca followed. The gradient was mild, but it felt mountainous. When we reached the top, I pointed into the distance.

That’s Little Matterhorn and Bastion Ridge, I said. We’re not that far.

Rebecca lay face down on the rock.

Get up, I said. The rock will leach all of your body heat.

She said nothing. I went to her and took hold of her wrist and pulled at her. She wept and cursed me and told me to leave her alone.

I’m not going to let you die here. Get moving.

We moved on. My own gait was weak, trudging. But Rebecca’s legs would no longer obey her. With each degree of body heat she lost, she was entering further into a hypothermia from which recovery became increasingly unlikely. She staggered and fell, staggered and fell, and each time, as with a boxer who has taken more punishment than any human is meant to endure, it took longer for her to get up.

I knew we would not make the LARS camp. A trio of boulders came up on our left, the closest thing we would find to shelter. Rebecca sat down on the gravel and rested her back on a rock and closed her eyes.

You should squat, I said. Touch as little rock as possible.

She didn’t respond.

I pulled out the radio and spoke once more into static and silence and received no response. I ripped apart our bundle of rags and set some of them in a pile. I broke up the small collection of pencils we had salvaged and laid them on top. Using my lighter, I lit the fabric.

I had to shake Rebecca hard to wake her. She pulled herself away from the rock and lay down, curled around the tiny fire.

No, darling. You have to sit up.

A small moan. Dry weeping.

I had observed my own faculties flickering over the past few hours. For a time I had thought we were heading back to camp on Ellesmere—the memory of an event at least a dozen years previous. When I first became aware of a distant buzzing, I thought it was an inner sensation, tinnitus, and then a hallucination, because there was nothing moving in that landscape except the grey and purple clouds.

But the heat from the burning clothing and pencils, paltry as it was, had restored me somewhat. And when I thought I saw something flash on a ridge to the north, I snatched at the face of the rock and pulled myself up. Voices. A man’s voice. Calling to others. Another flash, as of something metallic catching a ray of sun.

People, I said. There are people.

I knelt beside Rebecca and scrabbled through her layers of clothing for the flare gun and our last remaining cartridge.