EMBARK | THE BIG IDEA
Explorers praised,
reviled the coldThe cold regions of the globe can
torment as much as they can trans-
fix, as some renowned explorers
have made clear.
“The land looks like a fairy tale,”
observed Roald Amundsen on his
way to beating Robert Falcon Scott
to the South Pole in 1911. Under-
standably, Scott saw it differently.
“Great God! This is an awful place,”
he raged into his diary after realizing
that Amundsen had bested him.
Jean-Baptiste Charcot had a
love-hate relationship with Antarc-
tica, which he explored in the early
1900s. “Why then do we feel this
strange attraction for these polar
regions, a feeling so powerful and
lasting that when we return home
we forget the mental and physical
hardships and want nothing more
than to return to them?” the French
oceanographer mused. “Why are
we so susceptible to the charm of
these landscapes when they are so
empty and terrifying?” —KMFrom crunching through Arctic sea ice on icebreak-
ers to battling through Antarctic storms, from living in
a cabin in Alaska to standing at the North Pole, most
of my life highlights involve bracing against occa-
sionally mind-numbing chill. These are the places
and environments in which I feel most at home, the
places where I choose to live and the ones I long to
visit, the environments to which I always return.
Which is not to say I embrace the cold without res-
ervation. There are nights when I kick through the
snow like a happy child, overjoyed at how beautiful
winter can be. There are also days when I frantically
train space heaters on frozen pipes and wish I lived
in, say, Hawaii. I’ll not deny that there are times
when my favorite part of winter is the fact that
spring will soon replace it. I’m not alone in this,
even among chionophiles (the scientific name for
us cold fans). “I love the quietness” of life in cold
climates, says my friend Alysa McCall —a scientist
with Polar Bears International, a resident of Yel-
lowknife, Canada (where winter temperatures can
reach the minus 40s), and a fellow passenger in the
aforementioned freezing Tundra Buggy. But, she
confesses, “I have definitely been outside waiting
for the bus in the middle of winter and wishing that
the air didn’t hurt.”
Another friend takes it further. Eric Larsen has
skied to the North and South Poles, ascended Everest,
and traversed the Greenland ice sheet. The tagline in
his emails is “It’s Cool to Be Cold!” And yet, he notes
with a laugh, “I don’t like to be cold, quite honestly.
I hate being cold. I like being warm in cold places.”
I hadn’t thought of that until Eric mentioned it,
but he’s right. It may sound counterintuitive, but
one of the great joys of being in the cold is keeping
it at bay. Meeting that challenge engenders a special
camaraderie: the reliance and partnership that teams
feel when setting out on a polar quest; the knowing
nod between strangers, bundled up to the eyeballs,
passing each other in the frozen streets. Pushing
through winter, to emerge on the other side, elicits
a feeling of communal triumph.
In a world that seems to move ever faster, where
smartphones and social media demand immediate
responses, the cold enforces a slowing down. It allows
us—even compels us—to be aware of self and sur-
roundings in a way that few other environments can.
Life at low temperatures requires more thought-
fulness because of the “lack of safety that being inONE OF THE GREAT JOYS OF
BEING IN THE COLD IS KEEPING
IT AT BAY. PUSHING THROUGH
WINTER, TO EMERGE ON THE
OTHER SIDE, ELICITS A FEELING
OF COMMUNAL TRIUMPH.18 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC