Sublime

lip. So we bought another set of gloves, and as the air grew steadily colder we fought with steam blasting from our mouths.

Whether on foot, on showshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing shadows—a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had gone. Let the rest of mankind find me if it could. JOHN HAINES, THE STARS, THE SNOW, THE FIRE: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE NORTHERN WILDERNESS

escarcha.

Insects exploit laws of nature to protect themselves against freezing. They use sugars they produce naturally to create a kind of antifreeze, and they empty their gut to minimize their water content, because tiny amounts of water don’t freeze until temperatures fall far below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Five microliters of water (which is a vanishingly