The day was cold and gray, extremely cold and gray, when the man left the main trail on the Yukon River and climbed the high bank. A small trail went east through thick spruce forest. It was nine o'clock in the morning, but there was no sun in the sky. In winter, in the far north of Canada, the sun does not rise above the horizon for many days.

Everywhere he looked there was snow, white and endless, and the frozen river under it. The man did not worry about it. He was a newcomer in this land, and this was his first winter. He was quick and practical, but he had no imagination. He knew that it was very cold, but he did not think about what the cold really meant: that a man is weak, and that he can only live in a small range of heat and cold.

He spat on the ground, and his spit made a sharp, crackling sound in the air before it touched the snow. He knew that at fifty degrees below zero, spit crackles on the snow. But this spit crackled in the air. So it was colder than fifty below. How much colder, he did not know. In fact, it was seventy-five degrees below zero.

But that did not matter. He was going to an old gold claim on Henderson Creek, where his friends, “the boys,” were already working. He would arrive at about six in the evening. There would be a fire and hot food. He had his lunch inside his shirt, against his skin, to keep it from freezing.

A big dog walked behind him. It was a husky, a wolf-dog with thick gray fur. The dog was unhappy. It knew, by instinct, that this was no time for traveling. It wanted to be under the snow, or near a fire. But the man did not know that.

The man had a red beard, and the ice from his breath and from the tobacco he was chewing made a thick piece of ice on his beard and his mouth. His cheeks and nose were freezing, and he rubbed them with his hand. “It's cold,” he thought. An old-timer, an old man who had lived many years in the Yukon, had told him about the cold. Now he understood that the old man was right.

After walking for some hours, he came to the frozen Henderson Creek. Here there was danger. Under the snow, there were hidden springs: water that never froze, even in the coldest weather. If he stepped into one and got wet, he would be in serious trouble. He had to stop and make a fire to dry his feet.