Cold

by Bill Streever

  A full-grown musk ox naturally sheds something like five pounds of quviut each year. The stuff is remarkably light. Five pounds, stuffed and packed, will fill a kitchen-size garbage bag. Oomingmak, the Musk Ox Producers’ Co-operative, buys all the fiber they can find. If they can pull together six hundred pounds — enough to fill 120 kitchen-size garbage bags — they ship it to a company on the East Coast, where it is treated in much the same way as sheep’s wool and spun into yarn. Months later, sometimes more than a year later, the yarn is distributed to knitters, typically Native American women working in villages scattered around Alaska. At their own pace, they knit scarves and hats and tubular pullovers called smoke rings, which can be used to warm the neck, be pulled over the head and face like a balaclava, or be worn on top of the head like a chimney hat. Marketers claim that quviut yarn is as soft as a cloud. They claim that a woman with her eyes closed could touch this stuff and never feel it. A quviut cap of the kind one might wear skiing costs more than four hundred dollars. Quviut scarves go for about the same price as hats. Quviut smoke rings are a bargain at under three hundred dollars.

  For warmth, animal fibers outdo plant fibers, but plant fibers cost less. Picking cotton may be backbreaking work, but it is easier than combing quviut from under the belly of a musk ox or raising puffball Angora rabbits or even shearing sheep. And it was plant fibers that led to synthetics. Rayon was inspired by silk — which then and now comes from a caterpillar’s backside — and was commercialized in the late 1800s. Count Hilaire de Chardonnet collected wood chips and treated them chemically to get a substance called viscose. The viscose was pushed through a spinneret, which looks and functions something like a showerhead, but instead of sprinkling threads of water, it sprinkles threads of fiber. The sizes of the holes in the spinneret determine the thickness of the fibers. The count took his product to the 1889 Paris Exhibition and two years later started manufacturing and distributing large quantities of viscose at a factory in France.

  Rayon was the first manufactured fiber, but it is not a true synthetic. Rayon comes from wood fibers, while true synthetics come from materials that do not even resemble fibers, things such as amine and hexamethylenediamine and natural gas and oil. Nylon was invented by Wallace Carothers of Du Pont, who had once taught organic chemistry and who specialized in the study of long chains of repeating units of atoms called polymers. By 1935, his team had more or less perfected a method of combining amine, hexamethylenediamine, and adipic acid in a way that would yield molecules with more than one hundred repeating units of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. A filament of nylon might have a million of these molecules. Nylon was first used commercially for toothbrush bristles. By 1939, nylon was also used in stockings, fishing line, parachutes, and lingerie. By 1945, people were fighting over the stuff. On more than one occasion, police were summoned. In the worst of what have been called the Nylon Riots, forty thousand women fought over thirteen thousand pairs of nylon stockings in Pittsburgh.

  By the 1990s, a confusing array of fabrics and advice were available. Nylon was still around, good for blocking wind. And there was polyester, good for insulation even when moist, but heavy and clammy when wet. There was polypropylene, which moves water away from the skin. There was Polarguard, a single strand of a polyester-like material widely used as sleeping bag insulation — warm when wet but relatively heavy. There was Hollofil, with hollow fibers, and Quallofil, like Hollofil but with four holes through the fibers. There were the breathable fabrics — Gore-Tex and Stormshed and Klimate — with pores a few hundred times bigger than a water molecule. Water vapor can escape through the pores, but anything as big as a raindrop cannot squeeze through. There was PrimaLoft and Micro-loft, superthin fibers that are nearly as light as down but that do not form clumps when wet, as down does, making them warmer than down when wet.

  There are ideas, too, that have not yet been and may never be widely used in clothing. There was the idea that sealing moisture in might be beneficial under the right circumstances. A vapor barrier against the skin would signal the body to stop producing its base level of perspiration. Because trapped moisture cannot steal heat by evaporating, a camper sealed within a vapor barrier might be warmer than one whose clothes breathe. On the downside, the system fails if the camper overheats from hiking or cutting wood or running from a bear, producing pools of sweat that have nowhere to go. Also, few campers are comfortable lying in their own steam, and at the end of a three-day trip, they tend to stink.

  There was the invention and patenting of heated clothes. There are socks with built-in pockets for chemical heat packs, such as the “Thermal sock having a toe heating pocket,” described in patent number 5230333, issued in 1993 to James and Ronnie Yates. There is the “Electrically heated boot sock and battery supporting pouch therefore,” patent number 3663796, issued in 1972, the “Inflatable boot liner with electrical generator and heater,” patent number 4845338, issued in 1989, and the “Electrically heated garment,” patent number 5032705, issued in 1991.

  And there are the so-called smart fabrics and smart clothes. Some have porosity characteristics that change with temperature, the pores growing to release heat and moisture near hot patches of skin or shrinking to preserve heat when skin temperature drops. “It’s very simple,” one of the inventors reported. “You cut flaps in the clothing, and as the fabric absorbs water, one surface swells up and the flaps bend backwards.”

  Some even smarter fabrics have built-in microprocessors. In addition to keeping the wearer warm, the smarter fabrics have the potential to become wearable computers, providing navigation and communication aids and monitoring the wearer’s pulse and breathing rate.

  For his well-being when exploring the Arctic in the early 1900s, Vilhjalmur Stefansson consistently shunned the European ways and turned instead to traditional local ways. “For nine winters I have never frozen a finger or a toe nor has any member of my immediate party,” he reported.

  The Inuit, then and now, wear fur. On very cold days, one approach is to wear an inner layer with the fur turned toward the skin and an outer layer with the fur turned outward. Native American Niomi Panikpakuttuk said in a 1996 interview, “Of course caribou skin was the only source of clothing that we could get when I was young. The textiles that were available to us were not good for winter wear. As a matter of fact, I do not consider them to be the type of material that you could use in winter. I am still like that; whenever I am wearing textiles, I have to put on layers and layers of clothing on my body and legs, and even at that it will not warm me up. This is because I am a real Inuit. I do not consider textiles warm clothing.”

  In Anchorage today, two or three hundred dollars will buy oversize mittens of beaver, coyote, fox, or lynx. A fur hat can cost more than five hundred dollars. Mukluks, perhaps the ugliest boots ever made, cost four hundred dollars in either beaver or coyote. Bikinis made from lynx or fox or wolf, though of questionable value in the cold, might be considered a bargain at under three hundred dollars.

  It is March eighth and twenty-three degrees below zero here at the edge of the Beaufort Sea, reasonably warm for this time of year. On the East Coast, cold weather is in the news. York, Pennsylvania, is experiencing a record low for March, at minus nine degrees. Atlantic City, New Jersey, is also experiencing a record low, at four above. March is an unpredictable month. On this day in 1941, Philadelphia got eight inches of snow and at fourteen degrees experienced the second of three consecutive record-low-temperature days.

  We have turned off our snowmobiles, silencing them, darkening their headlights. The wind blows. Above us, eighty miles up, the northern lights stretch in a pale green arc over the pack ice. A hundred feet in front of us, there is a low rise. Near the center of the rise, a polar bear den had been spotted in December. This is the den that we hope to find. The wind picks up snow between us and the rise, carrying it just over the ground, dusting our boots and forming tiny drifts against the brown musk ox droppings that lay scattered around our feet.

 
On my torso, I wear two polyester and spandex shirts, covered by a light nylon jacket stuffed with polyester PrimaLoft fill, all buried under a thick down parka intended for use at the South Pole. My hands nest inside loose-fitting gauntlet-style mittens. On my face, I wear a full mask, polyester and spandex, with cutouts for eyes and nostrils and a small one where my mouth should be. I also have my parka hood, which for the most part I leave in the down position. If I pull the hood up, it forms a snorkel in front of my face, muting the wind, and I have a tunnel-vision view through the coyote-fur ruff that muffles moving air six inches out. On my lower body, my feet rest inside lined boots. I wear polyester and spandex tights, a pair of looser pure polyester trousers, another pair of thicker but even looser polyester trousers, and down-filled bib overalls. The down has been treated to fight bacteria. The outside of the overalls has a Teflon fabric protector that repels water but is breathable. Underneath it all, I wear a pair of thick flannel boxer shorts printed with polar bears.

  I feel as if I am wearing a space suit. I look like Charlie Brown dressed for winter. I am warm. Farther south, I would be grossly overdressed, but here I am stylish, in vogue.

  In December, the polar bear had been spotted from the air with an infrared scanner. At that time, she was digging the den that we hope lies out in front of us. A video clip from the scanner shows the bear turning to look at the airplane, seeming to stare right into the scanner. Her teddy-bear ears glow with warmth. She moves about in her den, which is perhaps three times the size of her body. Her movements within the freshly dug den and her stares toward the airplane somehow speak of her solitude. But by now she should have cubs, little bears that are cuddly but no doubt annoying within the confines of the den. With a handheld infrared scope of the kind used on search-and-rescue missions, we search for her. We see nothing but the varied shades of gray and white that make up the snow-covered hill. We move closer but still find nothing. The bear, if here, is not giving away her position. Perhaps the den has become drifted in, the snow blocking the heat signature, or perhaps she left, cubless, or even with cubs in tow, earlier than expected.

  I turn the infrared scope toward our snowmobiles. All three glow hot white against a background of gray snow. I turn the scope toward my companions. Their bodies are ghostly gray outlines with white blotches where they leak heat. They leak heat through their boots and under their arms and through their gloves. Their faces glow hot white, seventy-five percent of their heat loss purged out through their snorkel hoods.

  One of the snowmobiles is dead. Its key start results in nothing but the useless whir of the starter, and its pull cord is jammed. We pop the hood. Inside, the bendix — the end of the starter motor that engages with the flywheel to start the engine — has broken off and wedged itself against the flywheel. One of my companions pulls it free, and I drop it into my pocket. “Nothing lasts at these temperatures,” my companion says. Today he has broken the faceplate of his helmet, the copper wire that powers his helmet heater, and now the bendix. But with the bendix removed, we can start the machine with its pull cord. We head south, the noise of our machines silencing the wind, our headlights darkening the northern lights, our presence temporary, ephemeral leakers of heat fleeing south toward the warmth of a permanent camp powered by the almost bottomless pit of natural gas that resides far beneath the permafrost.

  For the denned polar bear, the outermost garment is not its fur but its den. For the human, the outermost garment is not the caribou coat or parka or Windbreaker but the igloo or snow cave or quinzhee or house.

  Much has been made of the Inuit igloo. Otherwise reasonable adults have the misguided subliminal impression that modern Inuit live in igloos. The igloo today is at most a temporary shelter, sometimes used instead of a tent for a few nights while hunting or traveling. A skilled builder with suitable snow — snow reworked by wind that can be cut into blocks with a long-bladed snow knife — can build a small igloo in a few hours. The hole from which the snow blocks are cut forms the bottom half of the igloo. Around the hole, the blocks of snow are stacked, each one angled slightly and with their size growing progressively as the igloo walls grow. Envision a spiral of bricks growing larger with each step around the spiral. The warmth of occupants warms the interior. Over time, with melting and refreezing, the interior becomes slick ice. The blocks freeze into a single integrated structure. Fur can be hung on the walls for better insulation. The entrance is through a tunnel that dips down and then up into the dome. Envision crawling through the snorkel opening into a warm hood. The temperature outside might be forty below, while the temperature inside may be well above freezing.

  In the past, igloos were larger and could be occupied for an entire winter. Igloo villages could be found scattered around the far north, especially in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. In his 1932 publication The Indians of Canada, the Canadian anthropologist Diamond Jenness wrote about igloos:

  Glance for a moment at the interior of an ordinary, single-room snow hut. You pass with bowed head along a narrow, roofed passage of snow blocks until you arrive at the doorway, a hole at your feet, which you traverse on hands and knees. You rise to your feet. On the right (or left) two feet above the floor is the lamp, a saucer-shaped vessel of stone, filled with burning seal-oil, and with a stone cooking pot suspended above it. Behind the lamp are some bags containing meat and blubber; in front of it, a wooden table bearing perhaps a knife and a ladle. A low platform covered with skins occupies fully half the floor space. There, side by side with their heads facing the door, the inmates sleep in bags or robes of caribou fur. If you stand at the edge of this platform, exactly in the centre of the hut, you can place both hands on the ceiling and almost touch the wall on either side. A thermometer three feet from the lamp will register one or 2 degrees below the freezing point of water, quite a comfortable temperature if you are enveloped like the Eskimo in soft, warm garments of caribou fur.

  In Jenness’s day, several igloos could be joined by their entrance tunnels or walled together. The largest could have five rooms, ice palaces in the northern wilderness, mansions of snow. Some communities built large snow domes for dancing and singing and wrestling. Certain communities are said to have settled disputes through singing contests in which the point of the song was to ridicule a rival. The songs could go on for hours, much like litigation today but more melodious and possibly as just.

  In the summer, igloos melt. A point would come at which a tent was erected. The community was mobile, moving along the coast to hunt whales and caribou and fish. When asked if this seemed inconvenient, an Inuit might have responded that summer is the season for being outside. Why would one want a house in the summertime?

  Away from the coast, in the taiga forests that cover hundreds of thousands of square miles, the snow is powdery and often sparse. It cannot be cut into blocks. The Athabascan people of interior Alaska built quinzhees, piles of snow that they hollowed out. The beauty of the quinzhee is that, unlike the igloo, any fool with a shovel and a bit of snow can build one. In fact, even the shovel is optional. The snow is scooped off the ground and mounded, then left to sit for an hour or two. The pores in the snow are saturated with water vapor. There are differences in temperature within the snow, and the water vapor moves from the warmest pore spaces, where vapor pressure is highest, to the coldest pore spaces, where vapor pressure is lowest. As the vapor moves, it cools, turning to liquid and then ice. The snow metamorphoses. It hardens. In two hours, it is hard enough to allow tunneling. The savvy tunneler pokes foot-long sticks into the mound, making it look something like a pincushion on the outside and providing guidance on just how much snow to shave away from the inside. The tunneler digs upward at a slight angle and then hollows out the dome. A bench might be left on one side. An airhole might be a good idea. A quinzhee, while lacking the elegance of a well-made igloo, can last through the winter.

  Today the villages of northern Alaska rely on imported houses designed for temperate climates. The houses, or at least the materia
ls from which they are made, travel north by barge. This is an expensive trip. After erection, decay begins almost immediately. Neither the materials nor the designs were meant for the Arctic. From the outside, wind carrying snow blasts the structure. The ground beneath, warmed by the structure itself, melts and subsides. From the inside, the humidity of human life — exhaled air, steam from a coffeepot or a shower, water evaporated from washing countertops or from houseplants — finds its way toward the walls and ultimately into the walls themselves. Just as water vapor moves through the pore space in snow, going from warmer pockets to colder pockets — from higher vapor pressure to lower vapor pressure — it moves through walls. It finds its way through any available opening. It moves through the insulation. Somewhere in the insulation, between the studs or joists, it condenses into liquid water and then freezes. In spring, it thaws. Water stains form on walls and ceilings. The water refreezes, and the force of expanding ice pops nails and tears screws from wood. Rot and mildew settle in. What was delivered by barge to become a fine little house quickly becomes a very expensive hovel. The mobility of the ancestral way of life looks increasingly attractive.

  In Fairbanks, the Cold Climate Housing Research Center looks for ways to improve on the outermost garment. For something over five million dollars, the center provides fifteen thousand square feet of space for labs and offices, but more important, it is a living experiment in improved construction for use in cold climates. The foundation can be jacked up if the ground beneath starts to melt. After jacking, structural foam or concrete can be injected into the open space. The building’s vapor barrier is outside its wooden frame but encased in a blanket of polystyrene, three layers thick, which itself is encased in stucco siding. What little vapor might escape through the barrier will not condense and freeze against the wooden frame of the building. Also, the building’s ventilation is set up to remove moisture, to vent it to the outside, but for the most part the warm air is reused. New air — cold air from outside — is sucked in only as needed. Just as in a snow cave or a quinzhee, in a polar bear’s den or a lemming’s subnivean run, carbon dioxide can build up, so the building has carbon dioxide detectors that feed information to the ventilation system.