I remember watching as an Inuit hunter was butchering a freshly shot caribou. He gutted the animal’s stomach, emptied it out and cleaned it a little to create a sack, tied up with a bit of intestine, which he proceeded to pack with snow. The hunter tucked the stomach back into the warm body cavity and, once the snow had melted, he drank the liquid through a small, neat block of snow that acted as a filter. The High Arctic is a desert, and the dry air makes you very thirsty. For the Inuit to get water they normally have to chip blocks off an iceberg or light a fire. So even the animal’s warmth is not wasted. When surrounded by snow it is, after all, wise to find some use for it.
How people such as the Inuit work with snow is a real education, and as we look back on the exceptional snowfall that preceded the Christmas break, we need to examine our outlook on this challenging weather phenomenon.
Inevitably during the cold spell there were faint voices predicting the onset of a new ice age while others questioned whether the Gulf Stream had been diverted as a result of global warming. But before reaching dramatic conclusions, perhaps we should remind ourselves that only a few years ago the country was suffering from drought. Fluctuations in weather are part of our planet’s natural cycle. I find it strange that as a nation famed for being burdened with unpredictable weather, we seemed to cope so poorly with the snow. Trains stopped, airports closed, businesses struggled and schools shut with the first snowflake.