The knowledge was: severe hypothermia can be survived.

The equipment was: heating pads and a faint ability to detect a heartbeat.

And the result was: a young woman, talking by noon.

The body that was carried into the Fosston hospital on the morning of December 21, 1980 looked like it was done.

It looked, by every external measure, like it had made its final entry into the long history of people who died in the Minnesota cold.

It was not done.