nothing is left but
a ghostly memory running over ground rock.
Tired of the rain, I wander back into the yurt. The park management has left a guest book. Last January, someone wrote, “When
we got here yesterday it was three degrees out and not much warmer inside. We got the stove going and got it to seventy inside.”
Last February, someone wrote, “I hope that the next person that stays in this yurt will have a better experience than we did.
P.S. It was minus fourteen Fahrenheit when we got in. We brought my dog with us. Her name is Biscuit.”
Also in February, someone wrote, “The worst part however had to be the outhouse so cold on the bum.”
I write nothing. Instead, I stoke the fire in the woodstove. I listen to the rain hitting the tent, audible over the river’s
rushing. The next morning, although it is August in a warming climate, there is new snow on the tops of the mountains. It
is termination dust, early this year, a dusting of snow marking the end of summer.
On the prairies, hypothermic and frostbitten children were carried into tiny houses. When times were good, these houses might
have been heated with coal or wood. Some families burned dried buffalo bones. Some, when they had to, burned what they called
poor man’s coal or prairie coal — little bundles of hay, manually twisted together and fed into a hay burner. The trouble
with prairie coal was that it burned quickly and did not put out as much heat as wood or coal or bones. Hay burners had to
be fed almost constantly, which meant that someone was almost constantly twisting together handfuls of hay.
Richard Byrd, in his 1933 solo adventure in Antarctica, would strip off his mask and diving-suit apparel inside his hut in
early May — autumn on the southern continent. He wrote of “the small sounds of the hut”: ticking clocks, chattering instruments,
and, importantly, the hiss of his oil-burning stove. The stove, unbeknownst to Byrd, was leaking carbon monoxide, slowly poisoning
him. It left him weak and confused. “I was at least three hours getting fuel,” he wrote, “heating the engine, sweating it
into the shack and out, and completing the other preparations. I moved feebly like a very old man. Once I leaned against the
tunnel wall, too far gone to push the engine another inch. You’re mad, I whispered to myself. It would be better to stay in
the bunk and cut out paper dolls than keep up this damnable nonsense.” He became despondent. He ignored an overturned chair.
He could not bring himself to read his books. He could not get warm, inside or outside. “What baffles me,” he wrote, “is that
I have no reserve strength whatever.” Eventually, he radioed his support team. He did not want anyone to know how his condition
had deteriorated, so he asked a question, by his own accounting, in “an offhand manner.” His request was simple: “Have Dr.
Poulter consult with the Bureau of Standards in Washington and find out: (1) whether the wick lantern gave off less fumes
than the pressure lantern; and (2) whether moisture in the kerosene or Stoddard solvent (in consequence of thawing rime in
the stovepipe) would be apt to cause carbon monoxide.” A few days later, he had his answer. Yes, carbon monoxide might be
a problem. Poulter, however, did not suggest any cures that Byrd had not already tried. On August 11, 1934, near the end of
the southern winter, help arrived. Byrd was, by this point, too weak to continue on his own. Without outside help, his heater
would have killed him. He would have succumbed to the fumes.
The human furnace, for a typical adult male, burns through something like seventeen hundred calories a day just to get by.
When the body is cold, the burn rate can go up another four hundred calories or so just to stay warm. Shivering can increase
heat production four times, but only until the body’s supply of glycogen — a form of sugar stored in the liver and
a ghostly memory running over ground rock.
Tired of the rain, I wander back into the yurt. The park management has left a guest book. Last January, someone wrote, “When
we got here yesterday it was three degrees out and not much warmer inside. We got the stove going and got it to seventy inside.”
Last February, someone wrote, “I hope that the next person that stays in this yurt will have a better experience than we did.
P.S. It was minus fourteen Fahrenheit when we got in. We brought my dog with us. Her name is Biscuit.”
Also in February, someone wrote, “The worst part however had to be the outhouse so cold on the bum.”
I write nothing. Instead, I stoke the fire in the woodstove. I listen to the rain hitting the tent, audible over the river’s
rushing. The next morning, although it is August in a warming climate, there is new snow on the tops of the mountains. It
is termination dust, early this year, a dusting of snow marking the end of summer.
On the prairies, hypothermic and frostbitten children were carried into tiny houses. When times were good, these houses might
have been heated with coal or wood. Some families burned dried buffalo bones. Some, when they had to, burned what they called
poor man’s coal or prairie coal — little bundles of hay, manually twisted together and fed into a hay burner. The trouble
with prairie coal was that it burned quickly and did not put out as much heat as wood or coal or bones. Hay burners had to
be fed almost constantly, which meant that someone was almost constantly twisting together handfuls of hay.
Richard Byrd, in his 1933 solo adventure in Antarctica, would strip off his mask and diving-suit apparel inside his hut in
early May — autumn on the southern continent. He wrote of “the small sounds of the hut”: ticking clocks, chattering instruments,
and, importantly, the hiss of his oil-burning stove. The stove, unbeknownst to Byrd, was leaking carbon monoxide, slowly poisoning
him. It left him weak and confused. “I was at least three hours getting fuel,” he wrote, “heating the engine, sweating it
into the shack and out, and completing the other preparations. I moved feebly like a very old man. Once I leaned against the
tunnel wall, too far gone to push the engine another inch. You’re mad, I whispered to myself. It would be better to stay in
the bunk and cut out paper dolls than keep up this damnable nonsense.” He became despondent. He ignored an overturned chair.
He could not bring himself to read his books. He could not get warm, inside or outside. “What baffles me,” he wrote, “is that
I have no reserve strength whatever.” Eventually, he radioed his support team. He did not want anyone to know how his condition
had deteriorated, so he asked a question, by his own accounting, in “an offhand manner.” His request was simple: “Have Dr.
Poulter consult with the Bureau of Standards in Washington and find out: (1) whether the wick lantern gave off less fumes
than the pressure lantern; and (2) whether moisture in the kerosene or Stoddard solvent (in consequence of thawing rime in
the stovepipe) would be apt to cause carbon monoxide.” A few days later, he had his answer. Yes, carbon monoxide might be
a problem. Poulter, however, did not suggest any cures that Byrd had not already tried. On August 11, 1934, near the end of
the southern winter, help arrived. Byrd was, by this point, too weak to continue on his own. Without outside help, his heater
would have killed him. He would have succumbed to the fumes.
The human furnace, for a typical adult male, burns through something like seventeen hundred calories a day just to get by.
When the body is cold, the burn rate can go up another four hundred calories or so just to stay warm. Shivering can increase
heat production four times, but only until the body’s supply of glycogen — a form of sugar stored in the liver and
Similar Books
