O Canada!

I travel to the north from whence I came so many moons ago. The land is wild. Icy wind buffets my face from all directions. Snow swirls around my feet. I pull my collar tightly around my neck.

I remember a different time of hot, humid days in the sun that lasted forever and bronze bodies adorning lush, green grass. The trees hung thick with fruit I would pick and eat on a whim. I remember smiling with my face turned skyward as the rain fell in a thunderous din. Every downpour was a new, clean beginning and the smell of star fruit blossoms wafted through the air.

I remember most of all the days spent riding endless miles of single track through forest and jungle and prairie. My lungs would burn and sweat would sting my eyes, as my skin turned from pale white to angry red to deep brown. I felt good.

My life is different now. I struggle with the persistent cold as it pries between folds and zippers and buttons. My fingers move slowly to grasp. My lips no longer form recognizable words and I squint in the bitter wind. My eyes water and the tears freeze to my bright red cheeks. I feel lost.

I am Detachment Commander, United States Embassy Ottawa, Canada.

When last we spoke I was preparing for my last semi annual inspection of my Marine Security Guard tour. In fact, I was in the middle of my MWR inspection when Gunny took a phone call in the living room. I made out a bit of the conversation.

“30 June, First Sergeant.” My ears perked up from the inspection table. 30 June was a date significant only to me. I was curious.

“Yes, First Sergeant. He can do it.” Ok, so now it sounded like I was being tasked with something here. I held my breath and my heart picked up the beat.

“I don’t know First Sergeant. I’ll have to ask.” Another inquiry. It couldn’t be me, could it?

Gunny put the phone down and circled around the table to my right.

“You’d better kick the Lieutenant in the balls or punch him or something, Staff Sergeant,” he said with a malicious grin, “because it sounds like you’re going somewhere cold. You could be leaving this weekend. First Sergeant will be calling back with the location.”

I gasped. At last! This was my opportunity to break away from the oppressive oppression [redundancy added for emphasis] of standing duty in the box. It was my shot to make a difference. But this weekend? And some place cold? I told the boys and we brainstormed as to the location. Delta company, South America, Chile perhaps? La Paz even? I had my fingers crossed for La Paz. But what about visas? Maybe it was being taken care of behind my back. No, because if it were, they’d need my passport and it was safely secured in the detachment office. Okay, so someplace I wouldn’t need a visa. I was stumped. I was stymied. I was mystified.

The next day, after a sleepless night filled with nightmares about middle Africa and ugly chics, I was again pondering my station possibilities on Post 1 with Chad, our assistant regional security officer. He was equally confused. We were trying to rationalize the thought process of the Marine Corps, something I should have learned years ago not to do, when Sergeant

Coleman waltzed through the door.

“First Sergeant screwed up!” he hollered defiantly. He looked at me with an evil grin. “What’s the last place you want to go?” My mind raced and conjured up images of the poorest, dirtiest, coldest countries imaginable. If Nepal were in Delta Company, I would have guessed there.

“Uh, I don’t know. Los Angeles? Yakima, Washington?” I stared at him blankly.

“Hell no! I was in the det office and he asked for Gunny. I told him he was talking to the RSO and he said to have him give him a call so he could talk to him about Ottawa.”

Chad and I looked at each other in surprise. Ottawa! Of course! We had all completely forgotten that Ottawa was in Delta Company as of January and a U.S. citizen doesn’t need a visa to go there.

I gulped dryly. I had been in beautiful, southern hemisphere temperatures for two and a half years, in addition to being stationed in southern California for five years, and my body damn sure wasn’t ready for the cold. In the winter of ‘99-’00 I journeyed north to Oregon for a few days, but winter in Oregon is mild at best. There was green grass on the lawn and not a snowflake to be found. In February 2003 I made a visit to Dublin, Ireland for ten days, and you can believe when I say it took me every second of those ten days to acclimatize to the humid cold that hovered around freezing the entire time. By the time my blood thickened up enough to keep my teeth from chattering, I was back on a plane to South Africa and, thankfully,
much warmer weather.

I sit here now like a 10 year old boy after a spring swim in the creek, bundled up in whatever clothing I can find - and slightly less of a man. Every fiber of my being screams Why! Why now after so many years in gorgeous weather? Why us? I cannot answer. I simply shiver and keep the fire lit in the trashcan next to my desk. Company orders and policy letters are, after all, good for something. I rub my hands together briskly and daydream to warmer places.

I’m an adaptive man, if nothing else, and I can feel those same fibers of my being slowly coming around and adjusting to the weather. I no longer require a base layer, t-shirt, long sleeve synthetic shirt, sweater, jacket, and stocking cap to stay comfortable. Oh no. In fact, today on the bike ride to the embassy I was able to eliminate the sweater entirely. Of course my face and hands were rendered useless after five minutes of cycling in the arctic wind, but my core temperature was doing just fine. I even broke a sweat!

I think my last greatest hurdle was The Furnace Incident, or TFI as I will affectionately refer to it from now on. The old detachment commander moved out of the house Friday morning. Due to horrible disorganization, I stayed one more evening at the Marine house and packed up and moved in Saturday morning. It was a usually cold Canadian day and the house seemed warm to me when I walked in with arm loads of bags and clothes. As the afternoon progressed and I attempted to unpack and organize my junk, I picked up a little chill in the air. I took my Casio Pathfinder watch (fully equipped with barometer, thermometer, altimeter, and compass) and set it on the kitchen table to adjust to the air temperature. It read 19 degrees Celsius (about 66 degrees Fahrenheit). Sure it was a bit chilly, but nothing a sweater couldn’t fix.

I continued to unpack and periodically checked my thermometer, and watched in horror as it dropped to 14C (57F) and then to 10C (50F).

What was wrong with the damn furnace?! There were three separate thermostats in the house and none seemed to do any good as I turned dials, moved levers, and slid sliders. I bundled up with my insulated pants, sweater, and stocking cap and prepared myself mentally for a long, cold night of sleep.

As an experienced Boy Scout who has camped numerous times in subfreezing temperatures without incident, I knew my best defense from the cold was a combination of layers on the bed and minimum clothing on my body. I threw three blankets on the rack and stripped down to my skivvy drawers and a t-shirt. The reasoning is that your body will heat up the air between your base layer (the skivvies) and the blankets and you’ll be snug as a bug in a rug. The common mistake is someone crawling into their sleeping bag with pants and socks and long sleeved shirts and crazy crap. This effectively heats the little bit of air space between your body and your clothes, but the air space between your cloths and bag remain frigid at best. In this manner you are essentially sleeping without a bag at all.

I slipped into the chilly sheets and chuckled softly to myself. Ain’t no broke down furnace frickin’ cold house gonna get the best of me! No sir! I thought I had it licked, but morning time made me see the error of my miscalculations.

I pretty much froze my jibblies off that night. You see, sleeping alone in a queen size bed is just too damn big for a single body to heat up on it’s own. The only warm part of the bed was the exact silhouette of my body as I lay there, shivering in the fetal position. I’m convinced I awoke mere seconds before death overtook me. My thermometer read 7.7C (45F). That’s pretty damn cold for a man in his underwear, in case you want this put into perspective. I remained under my blanket of ice for a few minutes contemplating my next move. My sweater and insulated pants were miles away, just out of reach on a chair next to my bed. If I moved fast enough, I might generate enough body heat to grasp objects with my semi-useless fingers and get dressed. I made a mad dash and grab for my pants and touched the hard wood floor, which was approximately 237 degrees Kelvin, and hopped back on to the bed like a cat with his ass on fire [Author's note: No cats were harmed in the writing of this piece].

After getting dressed and regaining some feeling and dexterity to my extremities, I went on the mission of finding out what in God’s name was wrong with the furnace. I remembered the old Detachment Commander babbling something about a switch that controlled the whole thing, but I never considered the fact he would actually have shut the damn thing off be it the tail end of winter and me moving in right behind him and all.

I shuffled down the steps to the basement and turned on the light. Three feet away, in a darkened crevasse where the doorway joined the wall, was a lone, black light switch with no discernible markings. With hopes that “self-destruct” was not a standard operation for residential switches, I turned it on.

The furnace coughed once and roared into life. “It’s alive!!” I screamed in my best Dr. Frankenstein voice with arms outstretched to the sky. I sprinted back up the basement steps and crouched at the nearest heating vent in the floor. Oh blessed, warm air! Well, not yet, but I knew it was going to get warm eventually. I adjusted the thermostat to 25C (plenty warm) and joined the boys for a commissary run to Fort Drum in the U.S.

When I returned that evening a wave of heat buffeted my body as I opened the front door. Yeah baby! Nice. I locked the door behind me, stripped down to my skivvies, and wandered aimlessly around my castle like a millionaire. I was rested, and I was fed, and most importantly I was warm. I cracked an imaginary Old Milwaukee. It didn’t get any better than this.

TFI was almost a week ago, and I find myself drifting on the memories of my near death hypothermic experience. I’m a stronger man for it. I am relearning the methods to the madness of living in the northland as I did as a child, often careless and unknowing of the dangers that can befall me in such harsh conditions. To be on the safe side, I tie a rope to my waist to guide my progress to the vehicle in the mornings. I’ve inked in my own temperate setting on the dashboard, labeled appropriately “Brazil”, where I can comfortably drive the seven miles to the embassy with nothing more than tanning oil and a speedo. The local guards regard me with inquisitive glances.

So as any man would do in the evolutionary scheme of things, I have adapted to my environment and overcame my deficiencies. I am a survivor.

Please pass the woolly mammoth and a side of iceberg lettuce.