I absolutely love finding out about new facts and beyond the joys of QI and other such programmes, I have been listening to ‘No Such Thing As a Fish’ on BBC Sounds. Comedy and Facts all rolled into one. Genius! But the most recent question – What’s the world’s toughest animal? And no Googling…

This creature is almost unkillable – the endless bounds of space, no water for decades, radiation exposure, 6000x pressure of the atmosphere, -200 degrees centigrade – in fact, it could even cope with one degree above absolute zero… Wowsers! That is remarkable. Though… if we were playing Top Trumps, it does curl up its toes in boiling lava. Well, you can’t have everything.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the tardigrade or water bear. At 0.5mm, it’s not going to be a great pet, but they have been hanging around for 600 million years, pre-dating the dinosaurs. One suspects they are here to stay, whatever we choose to do with the planet on our watch as a species. Barring nuclear vaporisation (another Top Trumps weakness), there’s not much that gives these little critters a hard time, for when things get tough, they expel 95% of the water in their bodies, retract their heads and legs, and curl into a dehydrated tun for up to 100 years. Cryptobiosis for you scientists out there. I reckon with the state of the world presently, that’s not a bad shout.

I came across these having had my mind blown by a book on Space – ‘The Planets’ by Andrew Cohen and Brian Cox, for I discovered that Mercury, our rocky nearish neighbour perched uncomfortably next to the sun and enjoying standard daytime temperatures of 500 degrees+, had ice on it (what?!). Mercury is a place where in crater bottoms, out of the glare of the sun, temperatures are minus 180 degrees. Not even the tardigrades are getting their beach towels out in that part of the world.

But my head shook even more when I read of the UAE’s idea to tow icebergs from the Antarctic to The Middle East to alleviate drinking water issues, not to mention using this million-year-old ice for gin and tonics. And you thought Fever Tree was expensive! Can you imagine – Antarctic ice, the purest, cleanest and oldest ice on the planet chilling your mixer?

The UAE to TOW AN ICEBERG from Antarctica to Fujairah (youtube.com) But let us journey through the murky grey and swollen seas of the Patagonian region of Aysen (Chile), where nearly 200 years ago, seamen would lasso their iceberg cargo, and sail back to harbour to unload their frozen cargo thereby refrigerating the city’s beer stocks. It makes the ice houses of Victorian Britain seem somewhat tame in comparison. We would cut winter lake ice and lay it in beds of straw, housed in sunken buildings to achieve the same effect.

Even today, there are also iceberg smugglers and those legitimate companies who sell premium iceberg water to make Vodka in Chile and Beer in Canada.

We are an ice age planet of course, having been so for several million years now and it was only 10,000 years ago that one-mile-high glaciers finally disappeared from anywhere north of a line drawn between Bristol and Hull. The ice age before that (500,000 years ago), saw enormous glaciers in North London. For those interested, the Thames was rediverted (it used to flow up through Chelmsford, then Colchester and out by Clacton) to its new course along the edge of the London glacier…

Anyone only needs to head to the most Northerly and Southerly parts of the planet to see the ice age still in existence; if you are looking for some inspiration, can I direct you to the brilliant documentary of ‘Nordfor Sola’, a story of two young men who, with only their surfboards and an adventurous spirit, lived on an isolated island off the coast of Northern Norway for nine months. It has to be seen to be believed.

But the ice had other impacts too. Up until the 1920s the Swiss were bemused by the fact that large numbers of their population in the mountainous region suffered from goitres, a swelling on the hypothalamus. Turned out the glaciers had stripped all the soil (which had traces of iodine) there leaving only exposed bedrock, meaning this painful and unsightly condition became endemic as crops were deficient in this essential chemical. Even clothing was designed to hide it away, such were the levels in the population.

But in 1922, after years of research, iodine was added to salt (iodized salt), thereby curing the condition almost immediately for the population.

But why write all of this? Well, in the UK, February is often our coldest month, notably around the coasts. It is a quiet month too as migrations have taken many of our airborne species to the warmth of Africa or Europe. But is it a time for the earth to rest and renew. It is a time to plan for the year ahead. It is at time to walk when the woods are silent. It is time to read the brilliant Robert Frost.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
 

Kurt Hahn had it about right when he created the silent walk at Gordonstoun School around the beautiful grounds, as did the Buddhists who spent a week on a silent retreat at LWC last year. Less is nearly always more.

The cold and silence are integral parts of our lives. They renew us. And if you don’t believe me, just ask Wim Hof, or one of the billions of tardigrades out there happily going about their days…

Adam Williams Headmaster