Editorial: With the thermometer soaring early this week, I found myself dragging out the fan, aiming it straight at my face, and praying for sleep. The heat was relentless. The kind that makes your sheets feel like a furnace and your patience wear thin.
We’re not really built for this here in the great frozen north. Most of the year, we’re wrapped in fleece, reaching for our toques, and joking about how summer might fall on a Tuesday. Real heat—the kind that sits on your skin like a wet towel—is a rarity in these parts. Maybe that’s why, when it shows up, it brings more than sweat. It brings memories.
This week’s heat took me back more than 30 years to my first real encounter with sweltering weather: South Korea, late June, just in time for the rainy season. Now, “rainy season” sounds like something gentle-a few misty days, perhaps some puddle-jumping weather.
But don’t be fooled. Korea’s monsoon season doesn’t really cool things down. If anything, it turns the heat up and wraps it in a thick layer of humidity that clings to everything, including your last shred of patience.
Back then, Korea in the early ’90s was just beginning to modernize. For a foreign teacher like me, fresh off the plane and full of naive enthusiasm, the lack of air conditioning was more than a mild inconvenience. Our staff apartments were basic—functional but sparse on luxuries.
A fan, if you were lucky enough to have one, became your best friend. You’d aim it at yourself and hope for even a moment of relief. It never really cooled you, but the illusion was enough to get by.
I remember how every small gust of moving air felt like a gift. We’d sit on balconies at night, swapping stories with fellow teachers, sticking to plastic chairs, fanning ourselves with folded newspapers or anything we could get our hands on. I
learned quickly that cold showers weren’t just for the brave—they were survival.
Funny how something as simple as a hot night in Golden can pull you right back across time and space. There I was this week, lying in bed with the fan blasting on high, thinking of the South Korean summer nights of my twenties.
And despite it all, having learned an appreciation for heat at an early age, I still love the cold. Give me crisp air, frosted windows, and the crunch of snow underfoot.
I’m a Canadian girl through and through. But I’m grateful for those memories too—the sticky ones, the sweaty ones, the ones that taught me how to laugh through the heat and how to truly appreciate a cold breeze when it finally comes.
