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A Breath of Winter
The why of it all
Robinson heard Honey die at four o’clock in the afternoon.
The fierce winter wind howled, laying siege to their little tent as they lay together in the cold, side by side. Robinson heard Honey exhale, the kind of breath that scraped at the air, forceful and desperate. But the next breath never came. It just… stopped.
He turned his head to see. Honey lay still, his lips cracked, eyes halfway shut, staring at nothing. He pulled a piece of clothing over Honey’s body, turned and went to sleep.
This was the world they had chosen — a world that stripped away everything, down to the bone, where survival became a question of who could endure the longest. Collins Mills, in Bitter Passage, wrote about this world, about the men who had once set out with dreams of rescue, of adventure, and now could only count their numbers, one by one, as they disappeared into the ice and snow. From the twenty-two who left Britain, only four remained.
But why? Why would anyone step into a place that could devour them?
I used to ask myself that question too. I’d see the news of climbers lost on Everest, or divers swallowed by caves deep underground, and I’d wonder, in disbelief, what drives people to such madness.
