Winter wars

It had been an exceedingly cold night. I hadn’t slept much and the watch finally showed me that it was time to get up and get out of the cosy tent. I reached over for my headlamp, clamped it to my head and snapped it on. As its light spread I saw many hundreds of tiny sparkling stars above me and I wondered whatever had happened to my tent. Actually the tent dome had frosted over and the tiny stars were infact frozen droplets that had ascended from my damp breath and my warm body.

I zipped on my heavy jacket, slipped into my shoes and unzipped the tent. The moment I poked my head out, the cold outside simply took my breath away. The grass crunched under my step, the frost making each stalk brittle. The stream had iced over and I had to crack the thin ice layer with my heel. I scooped a little water in my hand and splashed it on to my face. My face felt as if it had smashed into a wall. It was numb for a minute. I looked around and saw that everything had a patina of ice. Every stalk, every shrub, every leaf was glossed over, shining and stiff. I went over to the campfire and it too looked stone cold, the ash from last night’s fire all dry and grey.

I took a stick and poked around the ashes. At first I saw nothing but when I looked closer I saw a faint orange glimmer, a tiny sign that somewhere in this vast coldness heat had survived.

I quickly gathered tiny sticks, some dry grass and tuffs of juniper and I was immediately on my knees, my face close to the ashes as I blew at them. Gently at first and later, as the embers glowed a bit, I blew harder and longer till the little sticks and the grass and the juniper began to smoke. I blew harder still and suddenly tiny flames flickered to life and I had a fire going. I got up with a smile.

Yet again the heat had won over the frost in this eternal ding dong battle of the winter.