Cold strange

Late yesterday afternoon Steve received a phone call from the Greenland Police. They rang to tell us that they had received a signal from an emergency, position indicating, radio beacon or, E.P.I.R.B., registered in Peru. This beacon gave it's location as being just 18 miles E.N.E. of camp. The Police, who are in charge of launching search and rescue missions, told Steve they were not concerned however as anyone traveling into or through the National Park (yes, it may seem odd, but most of the ice cap is a national park) must first register with the Greenland Home Rule authorities and they had had no such Peruvian on their list of expeditions. But, with less than two hours of daylight left on our side, we decided that it would be unethical for us to not at least go out to the location and have a look around. Once the decision was made, Steve began boiling water for the thermoses. He then entered the postilion we were to go to into one of the hand held GPS units. I brought the snow machines out of the garage and hooked one up to our Poly Pod, a light weight plastic tow behind camper shell. Katy gathered up some food, the trauma bag and sleep kits. Andy and I dressed for two or more hours out in -48 F, plus wind chill, loaded up the poly pod with the gear and set off into the setting sun. We had fairly decent visibility but for some patches of ground fog. Each of us had in our own minds different scenarios: a privately owned turbo prop airplane had crashed, a guy on an unregistered winter sledging expedition had to toss in the hat, a drunken expat Peruvian, now living in Greenland got cabin fever and struck out on a stolen snow machine........ As we made our course over ground we kept our eyes out for any tracks in the snow or for a bright flare igniting the dulling sky; anything that might be out of place. Later, back in camp we both remarked about how the changing smudges on the horizon as it grew dark seemed to be smoke, and how it felt that we were surely heading for the edge of the world. To have that feeling of increasingly encroaching upon "there might be dragons" corner of the known universe, here in the 21st century, was a remarkably bizarre, but sincere sensation. When we got to the position, we looked around through frozen binoculars which could not be focused and of which we each had one lens too fogged up to see through. We drove around for another 2 miles in the general area and finally decided, through deductive reasoning, that anyone out here smart enough to have an E.P.I.R.B., not to mention, to have set it off, would have a camp and would by now have heard our snow machines and set off a flare. Or so one could only hope. The sun had set and we were cold. We pulled out the iridium phone and tried to make several calls to camp. Andy's fingers were numb form having had to check the GPS on our way out so I punched the tiny keys on the phone pad by repeatedly pulling my bare hand out of a mitten, entering three numbers, and shoving it back in again. Finally I broke into the tool kit under the seat of the snow machine for a phillips head screw driver with which to poke at the keys with. Though we sent about seven phone calls out, none of them worked. We gave up on the phone calling and decided to just get back to camp. Following our own tracks in the dusk with the last of the day's color lingering on the horizon to our backs, we crouched our bodies behind the wind screens and zoomed along at 80 kmh. After about 35 minutes we could see the lights of camp. As we approached the garage, we could see Steve and Katy by the back door of the shop with head lamps on waiting for us. We both gladly gave up our snow machines for them to take care of and went inside to warm up. Even after eating the fine fish diner which Steve cooked for us, and a having seconds of the lemon meringue pie that I had baked earlier that day, it took a couple hours for both of our bodies to reheat. Katy said she had wished she had taken our temperatures as soon as we had returned, but accurate core temperatures on potentially hypothermic individuals requires rectal thermometers, so we were quite relieved she hadn't thought of the idea until it was too late.
I fell asleep on the couch in the Big House after being lulled unconscious by Peter Sellers' simpleminded sleuthing of the mysterious jewel thief, the "Panther". When I awoke at that magical pre- dawn hour , and walked back over to the Green House, the Auroras were out and so were all of the stars and the Milky Way. I stood for a moment underneath the heavens admiring the sight until the cold began creeping in again. It was -51F when I crawled back into my own bed at five A.M..
This morning, Andy, tuned into the signal of the mysterious Peruvian E.P.I.R.B. on the single side band radio but there was no signal. This made us feel much better as it confirmed every one's initial suspicion of this whole ordeal being rather too weird to be true. We are all very happy that no there is no possibility of any one being out there needing help; a normal, lazy, Saturday could begin. Steve is cooking crepes, and reading, dreamily about the Azores, Andy and Katy are going to do their daily science rounds and I am anticipating a few more decent strikes with my recently discovered driver and precious collection of five golf balls, painted bright green, for snow fairways, of course, before I loose them all in the soft drifting cold strange world we are living in.