“She smoothed the silver hairs of her beautiful wedding parka, then carefully took it off and rolled it up. Placing it and her fur pants in a bag made of whale bladder, she tied it securely so that no moisture would dampen her clothes while she left. This she had learned in childhood, and it was one of the old Eskimo ways that she liked, perhaps the only one. She had never violated it even in the warm, gas-heated house in Barrow, for damp clothes could mean death in the Arctic.”