Blogs

By Kristine Hayes

My husband and I just moved to Phoenix. 

Arizona. 

Which, according to my Oregon friends, is the hottest place on earth. 

Hotter, in fact, than the surface of the sun, if you were to believe most of them.

Our friends and family couldn’t believe we were abandoning the wet, cold and rainy weather of Oregon, for the dry, warm and arid desert weather of Arizona. 

“It never drops below 175 degrees in Phoenix!” they’d exclaim. 

“People actually melt in Arizona!” they’d warn me. 

And I’d just smile at them.

Because they don’t understand that I don’t get hot. Ever. 

This is because–as a child–I was frozen. 

Solid. 

My parents moved our family to Canada when I was in the second grade. 

And we didn’t move to ‘just-across-the-border’, Canada. 

Nope.

Our ultimate destination was ‘almost-to-the-Arctic-Circle’, Canada. 

Northern Saskatchewan to be precise.

It wasn’t the easiest province for a 7-year-old to relocate to. 

The spelling lessons I learned in first grade didn’t translate well to Canadian. 

Just try spelling where I lived when you only knew how to sound out words. 

I did. 

Sass-cat-choo-on. 

My elementary teacher was not impressed. 

“Phonetics, eh?”

We lived in a town called Meadow Lake. 

I hesitate to call it a town. 

I suppose you might call it a village. 

There was definitely one thing you could call it. 

Cold. 

Not just run-of-the-mill cold. 

Meadow Lake was cryogenic cold. 

Take a moment right now and look up Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan on Google Maps. 

Once you’ve found it, zoom out.

Further. 

Further. 

Further. 

Do you see how there’s nothing north of Meadow Lake? 

There’s a reason why. 

Because it’s tundra. 

Tundra, by definition, is ground utterly incapable of sustaining life. 

And we lived approximately two miles south of it. 

I mean 3.2 kilometers.

Because immigrating from the United States meant I could neither spell nor measure things in my new homeland. 

“Metric, eh?” 

Is it any wonder why I was bitter? 

Bitter cold that is. 

The fact that the average temperature in Meadow Lake was colder than liquid nitrogen did not deter my parents. 

They were determined to maintain the same lifestyle we had when we lived in a more temperate environment. 

That meant going camping. 

In December. 

We weren’t exactly prepared.

Here’s a shocker: K-Mart ‘blue light special’ sleeping bags weren’t designed for tundra camping. 

Because 1.3 grams of polyester filling can’t stave off hypothermia when the temperature outside dips below frozen solid. 

Too warm for me in Arizona?

Not a chance in hell.

— Kristine Hayes

Kristine Hayes recently retired from her job and moved to Arizona. She and her husband own four dogs that they train in scent work, which is just a polite way of saying their dogs sniff inappropriate things all day long.