tortilla dinners in the Arctic

I mention winter a lot, in the winter. My least favourite season.

But a season that fascinates me, at least when we have the proper freeze-to-death-or-be-killed-by-falling-icicles kind, not the too-mild, drown-in-grey-slush-or-expire-from-the-sheer-ugliness-of-it kind. It is so exotic, in my slightly foreign eyes. The thick snow, the stabbing cold, the everlasting darkness. The danger, in this otherwise safe and quiet country.

And the unbelieveable beauty of ice crystals and forests buried in snow. 

And the way life still moves on when arctic conditions hit hard - how people dig their cars out of immense snow drifts and drive to work, negotiating lethally icy roads with a shrug, how children go skating in minus twenty degrees Celsius. How we shut out the cold, have parties and Friday night tortilla dinners and post pictures on Facebook and argue about politics, and think nothing of the fact that if we go outside without proper gear we might die within a few minutes.

I'm reading a beautiful thriller, Rosamund Lupton's The Quality of Silence. An English mother and her deaf little daughter somehow end up in northern Alaska, driving a truck on ice roads on a desperate mission. It's so far-fetched that I'm enthralled. And parts of it are familiar in my exotic homeland. Driving in complete darkness, without even the hope of a dawn, stopping to scrape ice off your vehicle in the murderous cold. The immense loneliness of it - knowing that if something happens, you're completely on your own.

I put the book down at last, with a relieved sigh. Darkness and cold may be surrounding me too, but I also have a warm bed, hot peppermint tea and an ongoing Messenger chat with friends.