Brrrrr!

It was -17 when we got up this morning.  We couldn't see the mountains for three days because of the clouds and snow but the sun is back and the snow-capped mountains are beautiful. The snow on the ground means the earth won't have a chance to warm up and our temperatures will remain chilly.  Could have been worse.  This could have started last November or December.

Here is a story about the cold from a Minnesota newspaper that I ran across while looking for something else. You may want to grab a cup of hot chocolate before you read it.

TRAGEDY OF A GLACIER
How One of the Victims Came to Have Two Funerals

In the cemetery at Goschenen in Switzerland a strange burial took place at the end of the nineteenth century.  The coffin, a small one, decently and decorously consigned to earth, contained part of a human leg, a boot, some shreds of clothing and 1 franc, 50 centimes of Swiss money. The unusual ceremony was the concluding chapter of a sad history that began on the Rhone glacier eighteen years before.

In the summer of 1882 the burgomaster of Goschenen and two friends undertook the ascent of the glacier.  All three lost their lives and the bodies were found a week later frozen stiff. That of the burgomaster was stuck fast in a crevasse and in dragging it forth the frozen right leg broke off like a snapped icicle and fell into the blue depths of the fissure.  The poor mutilated body was laid away in the cemetery with every hope, for the mayor had been greatly loved and respected in his little community.

The peasants say “Seven years the glacier grows, seven years she melts,” and in melting she honestly brings to the mouth of her river all that has fallen down her icy blue throat—a belief that, although partly fanciful, contains much that is true. By this strange operation of nature the leg of the mayor of Goschenen came to light after eighteen years. The boot was still on the foot; some rags of clothing clung to the leg; even the trifling sum of money in the unfortunate man’s trousers pocket was honestly returned by the glacier, which keeps nothing not its own.

After eighteen years the leg was buried beside its master. The tragic pathos of its recovery robbed the occurrence of all absurdity.

From the Princeton Union, Princeton, Minnesota