Readings for a Wind Chill Warning
At the moment I type this it is currently -4 degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago, but it feels like -13 thanks to the wind chill. And this is warm!! The Wind Chill Warning advises that Chicago's coldest winter in 8 years is about to experience the coldest recorded day in 13 years, plummeting the air temperature well below zero for at least 24 hours.
The National Weather Service ardently admonishes in all caps: A WIND CHILL WARNING MEANS THE COMBINATION OF VERY COLD AIR AND STRONG WINDS WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY LOW WIND CHILL VALUES. THIS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA OR DEATH IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN.
This is little comfort for a publicist who must wait for the bus twice a day.
But we in Chicago are not alone in our brutal winters. And for a few winter-weather survival techniques, I've turned to some books from those who know very well the tinging fingers and toes and icicled eyelashes of a long winter—The University of Alaska Press.
Painting a picture of early twentieth-century village life along the Bering Sea, two memoirs by Edna Wilder, Once Upon an Eskimo Time and The Eskimo Girl and the Englishman, poignantly capture the day to day life of an Eskimo village in a rapidly changing world.
Conservationist John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892 to "to make the mountains glad," was not one to disrespect Mother Nature, no matter what weather she offered up. In his letters documenting his travels through Alaska in 1879 and 1880 he provides a rare account of southeastern Alaska history, alongside breathtaking observations of glaciers and the untamed landscape.
Finally, another brave nature-lover, Will Troyer, offers his personal experiences as the former fish and game warden and manager of the Kodiak Island brown bear preserve in Bear Wrangler. It is the very exciting account of his thirty years as an authentic pioneer in the last vestiges of American wilderness.
Perhaps we should all stay inside, stay warm, and vicariously experience the snowy courageousness of others through these and other books from the University of Alaska Press.