SNOWSHOES 1977

SNOWSHOES

1977

I grab the door handle between my clumsy two-inch thick mittens, awkwardly trying to turn the icy handle with both hands, then shove the door with my shoulder. It opens jerkily along the spindrift on the floor. The cabin’s welcome smell of wood smoke hits me in the face, caressing my cheeks like the warm palms of Mom’s hands after a snowball fight back in Chicago. I stand, head bent, struggling to remove my gloves, pinching them between bent knees, yanking my numb hands out. Then I jam the gloves in the pockets of my absurdly plump parka and cup my frozen nose in my bare hands. It tingles as feeling returns. After all this I’m finally able to introduce myself to the ranger sitting there leaning back in his chair, watching the show, legs crossed, feet in worn cowboy boots on top of his wooden desk.

"Hey, Bill. Com'eer for a second.", says the Stetson-hatted park ranger over his shoulder to his partner. Bill, busy pouring steaming coffee into a rusty blue enamel cup, does not look up. He replaces the dented coffeepot onto the woodstove and ambles in our general direction. Mr. Ranger turns back to me, thumb jerking at Bill, and says "Okay, now you ask him the same thing you just asked me."

I repeat "How long do you think it'd take me to snowshoe to the North Entrance?" Bill stops in mid-stride, spilling a little of his hot coffee.

They are clearly amused, exchanging glances.

  Bill rolls his eyes, swats at the drips on his shirt. "Well, now. That's a hundred miles or so." This does not seem to get the desired reaction from me. He puts his finger to his chin, looks up at the ceiling. "Ohhhh, maybe fourteen days." Looks at me with a squint. "Why?"

It’s so cold outside this tiny ranger's cabin at Yellowstone's winter-deserted south entrance that the windows are glazed with jagged lightning bolts of frost, adding a milky glow to the tight-lipped scene. They wear regulation green sweaters, holed here and there down the front with cigarette burns. If one could soar in the frozen sky above like one of the few bald eagles who got caught this far north – the bigger brutes claiming the better, warmer territory further south – the remarkable thing would be the lack of color and movement. The entire universe is pale; washed-out greens peeking out where the few exposed pine needles aren't covered with snow, the world smothered by a weird leaden sky. Everything seems to be waiting. If you breathe too deep it burns like an ice-cream headache in your chest.

"I just wanted to know how much food to take."

"What exactly makes you think we're gonna let you do it?"

"What exactly makes you think you can stop me?"

❄ ❄ ❄

My second season training guides as a volunteer for Environmental Traveling Companions, a.k.a. ETC or Etcetera, plus guiding Arta river trips for twenty six and a half bucks a day, has just ended. Its now the winter "off-season" for us river guides, thus time to decide whether I want to travel, ski, backpack or simply hang out and read in my tipi in the redwoods. I count pennies in case I have to get a quick job washing dishes or whatever to survive until my first paid river trip next spring. At the moment I'm ready to dry out, but come March I'll be Jonesin’ to be drifting on whitewater once more, doing what I was meant to do, being what I was meant to be.

In my late teens I was a mountaineer specializing in crazy solo ascents in the Sierra Nevada and then the Tetons after escaping Chicago for the Wild West. I loved every minute of the immensity, the solitude, achieving a summit and gazing at all the world below. But I’ve exchanged that huge life for another; being a river rat doing de-scents, running rapids and responsible for the lives of a bunch of disabled kids and kids "at risk", otherwise known as “crips” (their own proud moniker) and “hoods in the woods”. Their parents or teachers somehow came to the outlandish conclusion that escaping to a river in the hands of some rather scruffy longhairs and print-skirted river rats might do 'em some good. Leaving behind for one brief but sparkling moment the brutality and banality of everyday life. It worked for some lucky few (like me, for example), sadly not so much for most. It’s weird, but though being a “lone wolf” is at my core, there’s a part of me that needs the river’s natural camaraderie, being part of that tribe of talented misfits.

Dead broke as usual, I was heading to Chicago to pound some nails for the winter for a few bucks, driving my old beat-up VW Bug instead of hitchhiking for a change. It’s getting harder and harder to get rides, even using the gimmick of playing my mandolin by the side of the road. Apparently the older I get, the less I look like some hapless hippie and the more I look like Charlie Manson.

It costs next to nothing to camp out amongst the ponderosa and digger pines in the Sierra foothills next to some rafting warehouse, eating three-day-old river food plucked dripping from a brackish cooler’s ice-melt after each trip. But certain things cost money; necessities like kayak paddles, climbing ropes, flip-flops. I'm making less than two thousand bucks a year, but am richer than those fools in their Porches.

I could have driven straight to Illinois, but “Jellystone” lured me. Since discovering the magic of water flowing over rocks stole my heart from ascending soaring peaks, I've wanted to revisit those earlier steps in my momentous journey into the wilderness. I needed to somehow prove to myself that those knife-edge ridges and savage glaciers were real. Mine forever.

❄ ❄ ❄

Andy, mentor and climbing partner from my teenage National Outdoor Leadership School days owns the property where I used to park my live-in school bus in Jackson Hole. He drops me off at my starting point in the middle of an ocean of snow at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park. In summer it’s typically bumper-to-bumper traffic along a ribbon of asphalt weaving through the middle of a vast arboreal forest that very few actually penetrate. Camera-toting, baggy-shorts wearing sightseers driving screaming-child-filled vehicles snake along, eager to spot the inevitable cluster of cars stopped in the middle of the road, signifying a large furry animal photo-op. Tourists returning to their roots as bear food.

This, however, is January. Not a soul around.

I have done a bit of cross-country skiing, but never snowshoed. Somehow it always looked cool in the movies (though I’m about to discover otherwise). Woven rawhide and birch, a slot in the center where you tie in your boots, clean and primitive like my vision of the Indians and fur trappers. Also challenging, requiring a certain level of athleticism. All these elements have proven to be essential in my spiritual healing journey from Jewish neighborhood inner-city Chicago boy to where nature is busy saving and kicking my sorry ass.

With cross-country skis you get a nice free glide, sliding along a few moments after your kick, feeling the clean fresh air bite your face, gaining extra inches with each effort like on a bicycle. On the other hand, every step with snowshoes is a deliberate stomp and there you are, klunk. Plenty of time to look around whilst some inner awareness remains dedicated to not tripping over your own feet.

Lift one foot high and sweep the leg awkwardly outwards and forward so you don’t end up hitting the opposite leg’s shin, which is already sore because you’ve been hitting it with that same wooden snowshoe’s edge since you started moving. Stretch it far ahead so the tail of the snowshoe doesn’t step on the front of the other one, or you’ll trip and fall. Again. It’s as if I’ve gained three hundred pounds and need to swing each leg around the other just to walk.

I stand there next to Andy’s idling car, cross-country skis in one hand, snowshoes in the other, glancing from one to the other, trying to decide. Andy watches, leaning against the fender, arms crossed, knowing exactly which I’m going to choose. Predictably, I stow the skis into the backseat of his car. Who knows – after a bit of getting used to, this could actually turn out to be fun. I tie on the snowshoes and test them out, stumbling and lurching like the Keystone Cops out there in the snow. Andy shakes his head at me. He does that a lot.

❄ ❄ ❄

My first goal on this typically lunatic expedition is a hot springs about forty miles north of the South Entrance. Forty miles of trudging through deep snow with the standard eighty pound winter pack of the day. No shit. It’s the era of lots of thick wool, heavy metal-encased Optimus stoves plus lots of liquid fuel, monster tents and synthetic sleeping bags that’ll stay warm down to temperatures equal to the far side of the moon. Not to mention I’m too cheap to buy newfangled dehydrated food. Nosirree. Frozen salamis, ramen noodles (which I often eat raw with powdered soup mix sprinkled on top), tons of carbs like chocolate and granola bars, gorp (“good ol’ raisens & peanuts), plus shovel, saw, tent, book… pretty much anything goes, no matter if it weighs a ton. Oh, I’d say a couple days to get to there, easy.

The idea is to wildly tear off my clothes in the insane frigid air and swiftly leap naked into the hot springs before I freeze to death. Somehow that sounds really cool and Griz Adams-ey. Hopefully some bison or Moose will be grazing nearby, ignoring that tiny pink head poking from the steaming springs like a Japanese snow monkey, whilst they paw the nearby steam-exposed grasses with some dull animal awareness that I'm harmless and brain damaged.

Thence to the North Entrance, sixty miles further through a shivering, frostbitten, tinkling, lonely wilderness that anybody with any sense would shun, preferring a sensible hot tub in their bathroom. Sense has never been one of my attributes.

Rangers hate doing rescues. We Great Unwashed are pains in the asses. It’d be so much easier if they could just ban tourists and simply care ever so lovingly for their own personal taxpayer-funded massive gardens and zoos. Some years back at the Teton Ranger Station, Andy and I were on our way to climb the North Ridge of the Grand Teton (Big Tit in French). As we stood in line waiting to sign in, the two young climbers in front of us asked the ranger about the Owen-Spalding route, the easiest climb to the summit. After a few questions, it was clear to the rangers (and to ourselves) that they were rank novices out to bag their first big peak. Nervous, fidgety, they asked about the infamous ledge traverse near the summit, acting nonchalant.

"So, uh, what do you think about that crawling traverse?"

Straight-faced, the ranger, one of the renowned Lowe brothers climbing family, gently explained to them how it was relatively easy, but very, very exposed.

"One slip, and it's pphhhhttt! Off the West Face." For emphasis, he shot his hand out in a graceful arc, up over and downward like a slowly falling body, all eyes following.

They ended up changing their minds and went for a nice hike instead.

These rangers are giving me the same treatment, assuming I'm yet another idiot. They don't know me. Of course I'm an idiot, but I’m rather persistent about it.

I fuss around in my gear and make sure they notice I have a good fourteen days of food. They're happy-ish. More like resigned probably. My guess is they’re on the radio the moment I’m outside, briefing the head office about the inevitable frozen body recovery. Once outside and out of their sight I dig the top of a nearby trash bin out of a snowdrift and dump six days' worth of food into it, along with some of the fuel cans I showed them to prove I wouldn't light any goddam illegal cooking fires. It may be twenty degrees below zero, but we’re in a goddam national park and open campfires are against the goddam Park rules.

Which ain’t a bad idea in summer when crowds of morons throw their cigarette butts out their windows into countless miles of dry tinder. When they light bonfires and drink beer and make believe to themselves and each other that they're hardy outdoorsmen. All of this in campgrounds managed by frustrated, angry rangers who hadn't quite planned on this shitshow back at ranger school. Anyway, I don't figure on anyone snowshoeing or skiing or snowmobiling way the hell out where I’m gonna be just to arrest my ass.

I trudge off, satisfied that I not only managed to dump all that weight, but because I snookered some rangers once again (a favorite pastime of mine). My famous goat-legs will take me through in half the time, just like always.

Ten yards from the station, I'm on the main road north. To date, the year's been mild, with little snow and only a balmy twenty below at night. What snow there is has been compacted, it seems, by an unexpected abundance of skiers and snowmobilers, at least for the first few miles close to the entrance. This is an unwelcome revelation, but it's too late in any case, and after a couple miles of tripping and trudging and banging the shit out of my shins, I veer off into the trees for camp numero uno. The crackling of the frozen trees in the light breeze draws my gaze upwards, punctuated by cold, crunching snow with every step. The evening purple is broken with the sawing of branches, the solid chunk! of my folding shovel as I dig my camp-pit in the hard snow.

In my frozen universe, much of the day is spent paying close scrutiny to the minutia of survival. Its partly about the stamina to keep moving; jumping in place, walking, shivering, swinging arms etc., whether eating a snack or taking a crap, until there’s a fire going to provide a very welcome external heat source. Its also about the savvy to know when you have too many layers on for the particular effort you’re making at that exact moment so as to not create deadly sweat which will freeze your clothing, thence your ass, the instant you change gears. Add to that the constant physical effort, never standing still for longer than a few moments and only absolutely if need be: tearing off or slamming on layers of clothing, peeing, pooing, stuffing carbs in your mouth. It's really as much a mind game as anything else. Every gesture you make – or don't make, every nonchalant cue offered up by the Great Spirit as a sort of take-it-or-leave-it or you're fucked option, has a clear-cut, loaded, instantaneous effect. An unexpected breeze touches your nose or eyelashes (the only exposed parts), and you better take a real good look around for snow flurries or perhaps the hot breath of a prehistorically large predator. Unexpectedly step through deep snow and you better hope to god you haven’t just dropped through a snowbridge into a creek. You get wet boots and you’re a dead man. Warm equals another day; frozen equals search for popsicle body parts left over by the wolves. Best to pay attention.

When you decide to camp, look for a snow surface with enough space in between the trees to make a reasonable living space, with no "widowmaker" branches above to conk you in the head. Check for fresh footprints, especially big ones with claws.

Nothing fancy, maybe a place you wouldn't even consider if the ground were exposed. Rocks, sticks, mounds, rodent dung – no matter. All that detritus is deep beneath the nice smooth, clean snow. Dig a pit with that shovel you've been grumbling about carrying all day, maybe six or eight-foot wide, depending on your tolerance of pain and exhaustion. Along the outside rim carve a bench with a nice backrest to place your foam pad. Dig the center all the way down to the ground or your fire will soon melt a hole in the snow and implode, spluttering and hissing as you leap up with a curse-filled bellow. Accept that this will happen at least once. Collect dead branches for tonight and tomorrow morning's fire. Lodgepole pine usually don’t have branches low on the trunk, but since the snow is six feet deep, you’re up there with the good stuff. The bigger the fire, the more time and energy you waste collecting, but in these temps you don't really have the luxury of a small one. Forget that “White-mans fire” baloney… I’ve seen plenty of Navajo fires big as a house, thirty or forty Natives slowly circling it all night long, dancing and chanting in beauty. Collecting might entail a short stroll, or it may mean sawing and hauling, which might add an hour before your entrée. At least that will make you feel better about the saw you're also lugging. A few crossed branches near the fire serve as a  clothes-dryer, but you better keep a good eye on it, as we’ll soon see.

If you're lucky, there is a small stream nearby flowing liquid under an insulating layer of ice and snow for some pure-tasting drinking water. But be very careful. Punching through that snow and getting your boots wet means hours of drying if you're blessed, frostbite if not. The other, more typical option is to melt chunks of snow in a pan. Twenty or so pots of snow will melt into a single pot of water, which tastes like burnt plastic but is good enough to fix dinner, brew some tea, and fill up your water bottles to clutch to your belly inside your sleeping bag to help keep you warm for a few extra hours of the long, long night.

Sleeping bags, clothing, mittens hang near the fire to dry out every last bit of sweat. Nothing worse than trying to stick your hands into a mangled lump of frozen steel before morning coffee. The crackling of fire is the best of company in this wild darkness. The smoky smell gives some texture to the world and it's dancing light lets you settle a bit, makes your puny speck amidst this universe of emptiness feel like a sanctuary. Fire also gives you the extreme luxury of simply puttering instead of constantly moving moving moving to keep warm. Back in my NOLS days, our climbing team was fit and focused as we ascended miles of steep winter trail to get to the glacier high above and dig a warm snow cave. No stopping unless everyone stopped together, silent uphill ski-skinning interrupted at intervals with a request from one of us for a stop. Then everyone would quickly remove or add a layer or take a pee, all together. Snacks were chomped whilst skiing so nobody got cold. Keep the fires in them muscles fuelled and burnin’ baby.

Set up the tent to stop the wind and reflect body heat, regardless of precipitation. Might even get up to a nice, cozy zero degrees F inside. Anything requiring more than the finger dexterity of a cow means a quick lope to the fire to unfreeze the digits, or jamming hands deep into your crotch, purring "ahhhhh" as you fondle the warmest part of yourself and the thaw-needle pain melts from your fingers. Finally, with pit dug, firewood collected, gear drying and tent up, you may rest by the warm fire as your salami unfreezes in the pot of tea water. Free to lose part of yourself in reading Walden's Pond, safe and where you belong.

No human voice disturbs the long, long evenings. This far north, the sun is at an extreme angle, offering many hours of muted color at sunrise and sunset, never really bringing any presentable warmth to the day. For music just the trees eerily groaning in the wind, and the occasional "phoooph" of a dropped snow load. The sun begins its approach to sunset by four-thirty, and it won't be light again for sixteen hours. You put off encasing yourself in your sleeping bag's cocoon of dark boredom as long as possible. You can ponder many things in that kind of wordless time.

The immediate problem is whether or not you can manage to work your bowels up to the task. If so blessed, you head out to deposit a turd that will freeze hard the moment it hits the snow, then rush back to your nice warm fire to unfreeze the fingers again. You can't move around a whole lot when doing your business. Your body is bound by three layers of clothing and you have to use one hand to push down the leggings so you don’t shit on them, and the other to hold up the parka to avoid soiling that, all the while trying to keep yourself from toppling over. You also have to go far enough away so any curious large animal that investigates the poopsicle has to put in at least some minimal effort to find the source.

I'm a long-time opponent of leaving toilet paper in the wilderness. After being lit up by some dumb-ass backpacker it has a real bad habit of blowing around and burning up some of the prettiest places on earth. Douglass Fir cones work a charm in summer, just insert and twist. Another great option are smooth, boomerang-shaped river rocks. But in winter, its snow. No shit. Amazing how many shapes you can sculpt to fit anyone’s personal anatomy just so. My favorite is an ice-cream cone with a blunt tip where the point normally goes. Cork and twist. Ahhhh. Toss it onto the steaming pile, smooth clean snow over it, doneski. Nothing unnatural remains, a fertile little present for next spring's growth.

Working it up during the long evening is critical to not having to clench for hours in your bag. But even with wondrous success, who can hold their bladder that long? Still, it’s a lot quicker to pee than poo, especially with your pecker starting to freeze.

If I've worked hard enough and shivered long enough, burning them calories in an inner bonfire of expanding and contracting muscles, and if I can manage to keep myself occupied by reading or talking to myself while keeping the socks on the laundry branches from going up in flames, maybe I'll manage to stay up past eight. That way I should be able to sleep until at least two-ish before having to get up and pee, which takes a good twenty minutes with all the frantic fussing.

A winter-tame Canada jay swoops onto my open hand, perching on my pinkie and gazing at all that tasty granola just sitting there in my fingerless-gloved palm. Not a lot of easy pickin’s this time of year, and even that takes some effort to dig up, burning yet more calories in that tiny little body of hers. Her wing beats tap my hand as she nervously eyeballs me, readying to fly off just in case, pecks a few stray bits, eyeballs me again, fluffs her feathers. This companionship with a living creature outside man's control warms my heart, but sparks a bit of loneliness as well. Such a difference between loneliness and solitude. The first an affliction, always prowling around and trying to fool us into shunning glorious solitude, it's smiling-at-the-moon cousin. The stillness outside brings momentary tranquillity to my typically troubled spirit, allows me to remember what's essential, to reflect calmly on my (many) mistakes. Maybe I'll avoid a few more of them when I get back from this little adventure, probably not. In any case it’s the fundamental reason I go out and do these insane solo wilderness trips.  I’ll get used to the steam from my own breath soon enough. Always do.

Going to bed is not like sitting at home with the heater on, the lamp aglow and the kettle on the stove. This may seem a little over the top, but in this kind of cold, all alone with nobody expecting my latest escapade to end for weeks, any mistake could very well be my last. It just doesn't get more real.

So, make sure the matches are put away dry, in the exact same spot they were last night and the night before so you don’t waste precious time searching. Repack all gear that isn't necessary for the night, making sure there is no moisture left in their innards to freeze. Leave morning supplies easily accessible for when your fingers and brainstem aren't working too good. The morning is the coldest, the blood not yet flowing and the wan orb of the sun not yet high enough to pierce the thick atmosphere of a planet ninety-three million miles away. Cow fingers can't strike matches. No matches, no fire. Consequences.

I grab my doubled sleeping bags from the drying rack, zip them up, toss them into the tent and sprint back to the fire, blowing on my burning fingers and reaching out to the flames like an Evangelist. Cupping my hand over my clay-dull nose every few minutes has already become second nature. Grab the water bottles, which are at present in liquid form, from the warming fire circle, likewise toss them in along with a high caloric midnight snack or two to help me keep pumping out warmth during the long, silent night. Back to the fire, blowing on fingers, stomping feet. Check that everything in camp is in perfect order; pack covered, everything in its proper place in case a random snowfall sneaks in during the darkness to bury everything in featureless white. Leave nothing close enough to the fire to become a tiki torch.

Finally, dive into the tent after shaking off the random rime ice. Sit on the cold ground, remove boots. Jam those big heavy lumps into the bottom of the sleeping bag so they don’t freeze solid by morning, a most heinous concept. Next jam already numbing feet into bag, using them to kick the cold hard boots to the very end. Warm hands in crotch, breathe, watch the steam come in puffs. Furiously pedal the bags away to clear the legs, unzip and remove pants, roll them into a hairy, itchy wool pillow, ram legs back into bag. Warm hands in crotch, breathe. Throw off down jacket and vest, set aside. Struggle back into bag and zip fully to chin, huffing and puffing through pursed lips, groaning with cold. If I were in a campground, anyone within earshot would move far away. Warm hands in crotch or armpits. Reach hands through half-closed sleeping bag face-hole, clumsily grab water bottles, already cooling, stow them in the bag near belly. Warm hands. Rewarm numb nose and cheeks, which are already kind of doughy and feel like somebody else's. Shiver in fetal position till the bag warms up, which takes forever (hands you-know-where). Wake up with a start sometime later, slowly realize where you are and what you’ve done to yourself. By now you're either warm and toasty or numb and doomed. Re-zip bag hood into a breathing hole just big enough for your nose, which in any case by dawn will be a frozen doughnut from your breath. Readjust all that junk inside the cluttered bag. Doze. Wake often, break icicles from moustache, unfreeze nose with palm, reach into exterior sleeping bag pocket and grab a bite of frozen chocolate. Contemplate your short, misbegotten but rather eventful life. Check watch, awaiting daybreak, which takes forever.

❄ ❄ ❄

On the trail in the morning, grunting the pack onto my shoulders and leaning hard towards my hot spring baptismal. One needs something to focus on, no matter how idiotic. Not long after, a loud racket startles me from behind. A stampeding herd of buffalo? A howling pack of wolves after some tender white meat?

  Clacking, clanking ski tractors appear, belching black diesel into the pristine air, accompanied by a swarm of whining snowmobiles carrying fat men and women wearing gaudily colored motorcycle helmets with microphones. Following behind them like flies after a picnic is a parade of day-skiers dressed in tights. Tights! They pass, shaking their heads at the absurd Arctic Explorer blocking their highway of packed snow. Okay, maybe my preposterously enormous lime-green pack, just right for an extended expedition here in the frozen wastes (as opposed to their couple-hour ski jaunt before steak and wine in front of the fireplace at the lodge) does seem outlandish. Smiling tightly, I nod as they zip by.

I persevere, snow-camping in the trees and reading by the renegade firelight. The further north I get, the fewer chuckling people pass me in their infernal machines and man-tards. Finally, on day three, I reach my cathedral, my temple, where Mother Earth will cleanse my soul once again. Dropping my pack at the edge of the steaming pool on the only visible earth I've seen in days, adrenaline takes over. There is an acre of steaming tannin-colored water, fringed by a mushy mat of greenery, frozen dew glittering along its farther edge. Careful not to startle the bison grazing ten feet away, I begin removing my million layers of clothing in a clumsy scramble, frantically hopping on one leg then the other, ripping off boots and long underwear, tossing bits and pieces of important survival gear helter-skelter on the soggy earth. I grab the bulky terrycloth beach towel from my pack (another weighty indulgence). Grinning like Wile E. Coyote, I don’t make the other obvious connections to that lovable loser.

Seriously focused, I do not notice the approach of the huge yellow ski-tractor, jam-packed with tourists dressed in orange nylon puff pastry from one of the civilized lodges just outside the West Entrance. I happen to be buck naked (yet another reason for those rangers to reach for their Valium) limbs akimbo and half-tripping half-sliding barefoot over the rocks towards my highly illegal bath. Finally recognizing that something alien is about, I do a little pirouette, blinking, mouth stupidly open. The flapper on the top of the exhaust stack goes whap-whap-whap like applause. The driver peers through the hand-wiped circle in the steamed-up windshield as I go ass-over-teacups and land on my behind on the icy rocks, feet up in the air, howling. I now have about ten seconds to either settle into the untested water that might boil me like a lobster, or conversely to furiously re-dress before I turn into a Jewcicle.

I choose the now wet clothing. The outraged driver turns the beast around and clanks away, no doubt harangued by his passengers who paid good money to see this accursed hot springs. The bison have retreated to a more suitable distance from the swearing, stumbling madman. I retire into the nearest stand of lodgepole pines a quarter mile away, build a red-hot fire after madly sawing a huge pile of wood, and hurl my execrable towel into it.

Never go to bed pissed off, my wife will scold and counsel me forty years later. Fuck that.

Sleeping fitfully, I awake several times in panic attacks, damp clothing worrying my nightmares, swatting wildly at imaginary bears sitting on my chest. Once the cobwebs clear and dawn lightens things up to the point I can make things out, I see what's up; the tent has collapsed from an overnight snowfall. I can barely breathe through the nylon pressed against my face. I madly flail and kick inside my bag, shaking the snow off so I can move. The poles are bent but not broken, so the tent pops back into shape, kinda sort of.

Last night’s fire is well buried under three feet of new snow. The pack has disappeared, but the white bulge against a nearby tree identifies it. Repacking with tight lips and hard heart, I head north on the now deep-snow road. It’s easy to follow this clear lane of purest white bordered by a corridor of tall, skinny dark trees, branches bending under a heavy load of new powder, which unloads repeatedly at random. The going is now more strenuous, each step sinking a couple inches into the new powder, despite the snowshoes. The hush amongst the falling snowflakes is sublime, menacing.

Maybe this trip was a mistake, thinks I. Perhaps I was just a tad hasty in my choice of propulsion. Could it be I was naive in my expectation of solitude in one of the most visited parks on the freaking planet, even in winter? Maybe I'm gonna have to wait in one long-ass line for that hoped-for spiritual renewal, like at the DMV. All that is left me is the supreme effort required to get the fuck out of here.

I miss human contact, which is pretty odd in my formerly elitist, now crumbling little world. But it’s my people I miss, not these… these interlopers! Trespassers! I miss just being able to sit down and relax without immediately beginning to shiver. It'd be nice to not have to curl and uncurl my toes and fingers every few minutes, jump up and down in place in my little pothole of stomped snow to keep warm blood flowing from my core to my extremities. Solitude is not replacing loneliness as expected. Those Others, aliens from another universe observing my madness as if I were some pathetic, rabid animal, have supremely pissed me off. No matter that they’re pretty close to the mark.

I'm not used to bringing these thoughts and feelings into my selfish little sacred space, and I don't much like it. But being past halfway, turning around is not an option. The good news is that the main attraction – the hot springs – is far behind now, which means my furious road ahead lies free and clear. And desperately frigid.

The temperature descends from Really Fucking Cold to Insanely Unhinged Cold. I can't breathe too deep or too fast – just the slightest bit of air pierces my lungs like ice. I meditate on slowly sucking air in through the double-thick balaklava so it warms a bit on the way through the wool and my trachea. Out, then in, over and over like a mantra. Steady now.

I trudge along, my brain recounting recent events, ignoring nuances in the tinkling world that formerly soothed my soul… at my peril. Occasional hundred pound clumps of snow randomly drop like soaked mattresses from nearby branches, momentarily startling me from my angry trance. For all the noise inside my head, out in the real world it is silent, patient, waiting to pounce. Not really getting the picture (not getting the picture being a personal strength of mine according to former girlfriends), I try and shake off my mood by the very deliberate and defiant act of not paying attention.

Every few minutes I can't feel my nose or cheeks, so I remove one huge down mitten – quilted with multi-colored patches and some really bad sewing, with my teeth, being too weary to remove the ski-pole strap. The poles are for balance so I don't topple over every time I trip over my snowshoes. I don't have enough spare energy for another strenuous recovery back to standing position, requiring amongst other things squirming out of my heavy pack in the snow like a wrestler trying to escape a headlock.

Once the fat mitten is sticking out of my mouth like a comic-book word bubble, I use the exposed hand to unfreeze my nose and cheeks, bamboo ski pole flying in a self-flagellating arc as I move my arm to my face. Then I unzip my fly and jam my bare hand into the warmth of my crotch, pole flying once again. A low moan of pain escapes as I bend over, elbows on knees, and start to feel my hand again. I put everything back together and get moving, hopefully having five minutes before repeating the circus. Even my eyeballs sting with the bitter cold. If I start to shiver, I might as well just sit on a stump and become one with the ice. In this manner I tromp forward as hard as my strong legs will take me trying to get the blood moving and keep the core temp from going past recovery.

I can’t stop to urinate without shivering and teeth rattling. My quintessentially half-witted personal path of spiritual redemption is to head out and do something really really dumb in some very exposed wilderness in epic fashion. One has to survive, however, in order for lessons to have effect. I will find this singular truth out, once again epically, in three years with metastatic cancer. But for the time being…

❄ ❄ ❄

Forty-five miles remain to the north entrance, step by awkward step. The day passes, evening descends, nothing stirs. Not a bird, not a rabbit, nada. They are wisely hunkered down. I imagine an owl dusted with snow sitting on one of those branches up there, opening one eye, following me for a moment, fluffing off the snow and going back to sleep, ignoring the bonehead with the lime green hump.

The air crackles, supercold snow groans and squeaks. There will be no stopping without a fire, and fire prep must be impeccably efficient, superbly managed. Every stream is frozen solid down to rock bottom. The trees crackle and knell like tiny church bells. The sun feels so far away, a faint star in a distant universe. It seems as cold as its sister moon, which in time replaces it in the sky. Breathtaking stars sparkle and beckon, more alive than any heaven I’ve ever beheld.

And yet I do not appreciate these things. Me – the guy who prides himself on his inner compass, on knowing exactly where he is in the world – is hopelessly lost. Not outside, that part's easy. This spiritual cold is inside my marrow and brain. I'm like a berserk horse smellin' the barn, and just like one I could easily go on till I drop dead in my tracks.

Sometime before dawn, having hiked all day and most of the night, pack painfully digging into my shoulders and legs made of lead, I finally lean leftwards, deep into a thicket of lodgepoles. Must...camp...now...

I’ll skip the fire. Too tired. It'll be fine.

I crawl into my bags. Sleep... Need Sleep. Some cheese and crackers should be plenty of fuel for what little is left of the night. (One red flag, two red flags, three... This is the way it goes down.)

The usual sleeping bag ritual takes a bit longer, even leaving most of my wet clothes on. Just a little rest. I lay down and I'm gone, bam, out like a light.

Soon the dopey mind games...Your thighs are chafed...you better get up and put Vaseline on 'em or you'll be sorrrr-yyyyyy. Pee. MUST PEE. Bladder full? Try getting up and PEEING! PeePeePeePeeeeeeee...

Arguing with your dick is of course futile. I’ve learned this over time. Frustrated, I struggle with the zippers, start shivering as I tug the boots on. Faster! Go faster and you'll warm up! Shivering turns to wracking shudders before I finally manage to open the goddam tent zip and dive out into the sublimely frozen night.

Snow and blackness, deep shadows and utter silence. I focus on the pack, lit by the moon and leaning against a nearby tree, somehow unzip the top, grab the Vaseline and apply it to my thighs after struggling my pants down, and contract my belly to force the urine out fast. Then I dive back into the rime-ice covered tent sparkling in the headlamp and replay the long routine into the cold bags.

But now, even inside the bags with all my clothes on, my shivering becomes fierce. I doze. An instant later I'm shocked awake, neck hairs on end, eyes wide in terror, explosively fighting the constriction of my sleeping bags.

What the... water!!? I'm wet!! Holy fuck!!

My hands franticly pat around, searching for the source. Oh shit, its my belly! Grabbing the now nearly empty water bottle with the apparently loose lid I hurl it through the constricted sleeping bag face hole. I feel around down there, frantically assessing the damage. (I will repeat this little exercise in a few years, searching under hospital sheets for my missing right testicle.)

Omygod… I’m soaked!

I am no longer coolly walking on the edge. I have now careened headlong over it.

 The moon's light bathes everything in a ghostly gray. Wisps of clouds scud through its luminescence, so far away, creating haunted shadows which flit along the tent fabric. Puff, puff, puff, quick little smoke rings of steam billow from my mouth and dissipate into the claustrophobic tent space. Brittle pine needles rustle, a breeze flaps my tent fabric way out here in the endlessly lonely forest. Everything holds its breath, watching.

Fast. Move FAST! I unzip the bag, grab my parka and tumble out into the night, veering towards my pack and the saw. Why didn't I gather firewood, dammit? At the pack, I jam my hand in.

No saw.

Open mouthed, I frantically drive both arms into each corner, down to the very bottom. Nothing. I kick into the snow all around the pack. Zippo. Face contorted, blood like ice, it comes to me like a ton of bricks: Oh my God... buried in the snowfall at the last camp!

The wind has returned to see what's up. Then a tormented, naked howl penetrates the vastness, fusing everything. And here we are. That resplendent moment people try to grasp but cannot until they've touched the void themselves. You can't buy it or read it or visit it in a bus. It has a higher price of admission. That camera close-up contorted face shot, and then the zoom out, opening up to a panorama of star-blasted heavens. Impeccable. Sublime. Seen most clearly when The End is standing right beside you grinning like a skull, close enough for you to touch her dazzling face. Agonized, primal, supernatural. Matchless terror and awe.

Was that a wolf?

Nope. Me.

Sleep of the deepest sort beckons. I briefly gaze into it, shake it off, will my mind to choose something other. It comes to me that my fingers are still exposed, touching the top of the pack, and I cannot feel them.

Now or never. The difference between a survivor  (meaning you nearly screwed the pooch but lucked out, another nincompoop masquerading as a hero), versus one of those dead fools everyone loves to chuckle about over a beer.

All downed wood is buried under new snow. I look left, then right, my focus narrowing to the lodgepoles in the moonlight – dead branches, "squaw wood," sticking out like skeleton arms from scrawny trunks, just a bit too high to reach. The steam from my breath silhouettes the moon in quick pulses.

Panting, snarling, I crouch. Slitted eyes peer, identifying targets, dangers. I spot what I’m looking for – a smallish standing tree in the vanishing darkness, no visible needles, thus probably dead and hopefully brittle. It means everything. I wade towards the snag through the snow and stop at its base, knock to test it. Hollow sounding? I turn and backtrack, turn again, over and over, firmly packing down a narrow path, which becomes a deep, solid-bottomed snow-ditch-walled sidewalk maybe 30 strides long. Arms swinging from side to side, pushing my legs as hard as possible like a snow plow, trying to work up a sweat, warm the core. Finally ready for the defining moment, turning, I briefly close my eyes, take a deep breath, and take off running hard, crouched low, aiming my shoulder for a tackle. I shut myself to the consequences of failure.

Incredibly, the rotten tree snaps with a crack on impact as I sprawl backwards, and it topples and fluffs into the deep snow. I roll my shoulder – sore but intact. I then dig out the fifteen foot log, carrying it balanced in the middle, and with a feral roar race back along the path in the other direction towards a very stout looking tree. I hurl the log into the air with an insane shriek, it snaps cleanly in half. I pick up each half one at a time by its end, whirling and grunting as if doing the Scottish hammer throw. Centrifugal force lifts it above the snow, as I stumble sideways until this also slams against my sturdy tree and snaps.

Step one: dry firewood. Check.

  I wade to my pack, still shivering uncontrollably. Keep working, brain. Please.

I shovel a fire pit, snow flying. In fifteen minutes I have a circular pit, dug through six feet of snow to the frozen earth, ready to accept the flames. Soon, unearthly shadows make the surrounding trees dance and jig, pushing the stalking beast beyond my enchanted circle. Sorry, amigo. Maybe next time. One match fire baby – Boy Scout perfection.

Collapsing onto the snow bench to one side of the fire, I hold out my frozen sleeping bag lumps like offerings to the Gods of Flame. As my fingers warm and the bags steam and the ice-lumps start to drip and the fire grows, I build a stick lean-to on the other side and drape my icicle-pants over it. My heartbeat slows, spine warms, consciousness drifts...

I awake to the smell of burning wool, dropping my bag with a shout. I run to the other side of the fire, grab the burning pants and stomp them out. At which point I smell burning nylon, flames licking the bags I've just dropped on the other side of the fire…

The pre-dawn darkness finds me reciting a Robert Service poem called The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill to the low hanging moon, seemingly impaled on the tips of surrounding treetops.

“Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall

Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all

Sparkling ice on the dead man’s chest, glittering ice in his hair,

Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare”

My fingers finally working, I darn my green pants with red wool and sew blue patches on my orange bags with brown thread in the glorious radiance of a new day. Close call. Nobody gets out of this alive. Still… not yet.

For a change even the granola seems fit for a king. Soon I'm back on the trail, rehearsing my hapless mistakes, settling up.

A snowmobile – the first motorized sound for days – the first intrusion into what seems a brand-new and blessed life, comes down the road ahead and pulls up facing me. The ranger twists off the key with his mittened hand, the motor flutters off. His frozen breath drifts, disappears in front of his goggles.

Facing each other like bull elk, steam-breathed and a silent sizing-up.

Chicago stares straight into his goggles. Ranger looks down at the snow, spits brown chew into the snow beside his machine.

"You sleep out last night?" he asks in a terse Western drawl.

"Yep. Why?"

"Sixty degrees below zero, not countin' the wind. Set a record I reckon."

"Huh. You don't say."

"Damn lucky to be alive."

I shrug, half smiling.

He and his wife spend winters in a log cabin on the shore of Yellowstone Lake, boundless and frozen and magnificent, patrolling via rangermobile and breaking the wintery monotony with the occasional ice skate on the lake under the moon. Its about three miles north of here. He invites me to spend the night, hoping no doubt that I'm not so big a fool as to refuse his hospitality. I am not. I have seen my mortality once again, and I am humbled, if only briefly. I will see my mortality time after time after time in the blessed and damned years to come, until it becomes like tilting a glass of single malt after a big day.

He goes off on business, I happily plod ahead solo and arrive at dark depleted, embracing the chance for human company. They entertain me with good red wine, local Montana steak, and a nice warm bunk in the spare room with a quilted down comforter. My gear is draped along all the walls, the chairbacks, the doorknob, and should dry nicely by morning. The infinite moonlight bathes the lake outside the triple-glazed window, bison pawing along the near shore. I collapse into oblivion.

❄ ❄ ❄

Next dawn, renewed, I am off north once again, aiming to make the final twenty-five miles in two long days. Up and down long mountain grades, head down, brain chattering away, stopping only for a quick snack or a piss, one step after another.

A rumbling, muscular sound catches my attention, one I recognize deep inside. I pause, turn, and there below me, just off the road in a deep canyon-curve of ancient earth and rock, rimmed with trees outlining a chalice-shaped notch, is the impossible Yellowstone Falls, illuminated by a full moon reflecting off luminous snow and ice. I watch the river dance below, and it fills me as it has since we met, completes me as it will till the end. I seem to have gone all day and well into the night. Hadn’t even noticed. Weightlessly billowing in its riverbed below, swirling and misting in the wind, the sound of water arrives to calm me once more.

It's way too cold to stay still, so I carry on, tucking that celestial vision into permanent memory. The trees creak, and I do not pause until light begins to consume the stars and dawn once again fills  the boreal outline.

And then there's the North Entrance sign. Twenty-four hours of non-stop snowshoeing has brought me to the end of another capricious journey of a mercurial spirit. Once again my body did not betray my need. How lucky to be able to rely on it to do my bidding no matter how preposterous or foolhardy the mission. I will have three more years of this feeling of bigger-than-life-ness before the cancer comes to remove a few organs, not to mention a bit of cheek. Not long thereafter, Gillian Barre Syndrome will finish the job. That monster will steal my limbs for a bit, as moving even one single finger will force me to suck air through my teeth and shut my eyes tight, waiting for the exquisite pain all the way up my arm to ease enough to breathe again. Funny how surviving those interlopers will manage to bring the late-blooming mellowness and acceptance which my constantly manic follies had failed to produce. We are all fated to work with what the universe offers and extinguishes. Inhabiting a body that is no longer effortless finally gave me that certain freedom our disabled clients at Etcetera owned, an understanding of the value and meaning of a life as ephemeral as a waterfall. As my buddy Joe Biner, who has Cerebral Palsy, once explained in his heartwarming CP accent; “We’re all disabled. Mine’s just more obvious.” This lesson will soften my approach to others who drag their own bag of rocks around, which will also be a good thing. For a few years yet though, I will continue to revel in the arrogance of youth.

There is an abandoned gas station here, winter boarded up and desolate but still a shelter of sorts. I lay out my bag to catch some shut-eye and await what I hope will be a ride. After a time, I am roused from my first deep sleep in lifetimes by the rattle of a diesel engine, and I struggle to escape my bags as an empty school bus rumbles up the plowed road. I run and slide over the ice in my long underwear and socks, waving my arms like an escapee from the looney bin, but miss the bus. I pack in a rush so I’m ready next time, if there is a next time, and two hours later, standing by the side of the road and shivering uncontrollably, a semi appears. I hold out my thumb. The driver stares at me from underneath his cowboy hat. He is clearly not planning on stopping for my hippie ass. Bullshit. I am desperately cold, having done the verboten and stood still before the thing was really over. I dash directly in front of his truck and skid to a stop with my arms outstretched, looking like a figure skater ending my routine, and I stare right back at him, daring him to run me over.

Thankfully, perhaps after a little inner debate, he chooses to spare me. I pile into the heated cabin. After an apology, we become compadres, me somehow gaining a slight drawl, him probably wondering what kind of fool would be way the hell out here all by his lonesome without a rifle and a horse. I am grateful for the human contact, and will buy a bus ticket back to Jackson Hole from Bozeman.

Only after the trucker drops me off in front of a sleazy diner on Bozeman's snowy main street do I realize that I left those dang snowshoes back there at that gas station.

I hope someone gets some use out of them. I sure as hell won't be needing them ever again.

❄ ❄ ❄

Thirteen years later, at Warm Springs rapids, the only real whitewater the Yampa has to offer, Martha passes by me in her little raft after a long, fear-filled scout and successful run. I'm bobbing in my kayak in an eddy just below, ready to paddle out and pick up wide-eyed gasping swimmers as necessary. Ready for my friends, my pards. Ready for my wife Carrie soon to come (also terrified). In my usual role; providing safety. Martha smiles her gorgeous smile as she floats by, tosses her glorious red hair and says "You know, I'll always think of you sitting in a downstream eddy, smiling, waiting, watching."

It’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me.