Life is simple when it’s hard

Returning to the harsh place where I feel most at home

Over the holidays, Beat and I enjoyed our annual sojourn at latitude 64.81° N — Fairbanks, Alaska. Here on the winter solstice, daytime spans a mere three hours and 41 minutes. It’s a sleepy sort of daylight, with the sun lolling lazily over the southern horizon before slumping seemingly immediately back into it. If there are hills or low-lying clouds in the way, the sun won’t show its face at all.

Without sunlight to warm the atmosphere, Arctic air sinks into the landscape. Temperatures regularly hover around 0°F and are often far below. In deep subzero cold, bare skin can only be exposed to the air for a few minutes before it begins to freeze. Add a light breeze and that timeline essentially drops to zero. In the harshest conditions, every moment outdoors is a fight for survival: Wrapping ourselves in insulation to retain precious body heat, engaging muscles to create that heat, and eating to sustain that motion, all while strategically venting the sweat that was so critical to humans on the savanna but only hinders us in these far northern climes.

This is, perhaps, my favorite way to be: At the mercy of an expansive, beautiful landscape that cares nothing for me and could kill me in a blink, and yet emboldened to move forward for hours or days on end. This boldness is buttressed by a sled full of survival gear that weighs me down painfully but gives me the mental strength to face scenarios that are far more harrowing than many I shrink from in “real” life. I feel strong out here, even as my shoulders ache and hamstrings tighten, and even while moving at 2.5 mph or less takes every ounce of muscle power my body can muster.

I like it when it’s just me and my sled against the world. This is perhaps the most difficult part to explain to others — even those who “get” the rest of it: the love for Alaska in its darkest weeks or spending days in the frozen wilderness. Why choose the most physically taxing, slowest mode of travel for this environment? For this, I have no succinct answer.

While in Alaska, Beat and I embarked on two separate trips through the White Mountains, hiking 95 miles over six days for the first, and 61 miles over three days for the second. We stayed in bare-bones public-use cabins maintained by the Bureau of Land Management. We collected firewood to stay warm, cooked with camp stoves, and melted snow for drinking water. We carried all of our food, survival gear, fuel, and sleeping kits in our sleds. Mine likely weighed north of 60 pounds, especially at the beginning of the six-day trip. There’s no succinct way to describe why these trips were so special, but I wanted to share a snippet from each of the nine days. Perhaps if you read them, you’ll understand, too?

December 19, 2023. 19 miles, 1,683 feet climbing. Starting temp: -2°F. Overcast and breezy. Time on the trail: Eight hours, 31 minutes.

It snowed sometime in the past two days. At the time were likely on our way to the Denver airport, basking in the 60-degree heat wave that often hits Colorado around the winter solstice. But here in Alaska’s White Mountains, the sharp ice crystals that pass for snow were wafting through subzero air, coating the landscape in gritty powder. Now the trail has the consistency of sandpaper. This is not the most ideal way to start an Alaska sled trip, with the sharpest of air irritating my airways as my undertrained legs strain against a sled that won’t glide. This feels like dragging a dead moose. I look back to make sure one hasn’t hitched a ride.

Beat is somewhere far ahead. I don’t know how far. We agreed that traveling together wasn’t practical in these cold temperatures — too difficult to maintain body heat or regulate sweat when one partner must hold back while the other pushes themselves too hard. I spend several minutes watching the trail, tracing my footsteps against Beat’s footprints. I take three strides for every two of his and guess — correctly — that he is 30% faster than me. This means he’s an hour ahead already.

A piercing breeze sweeps along the low-lying valley beside Wickersham Creek. My body temperature drops in increments too gradual to notice until suddenly I’m shivering profusely. Finally, I stop to fix the weak links in my layering, adding thick fleece knee warmers below my puffy shorts and a balaclava to my head. The soft headgear settles stiffly over an ice-encrusted buff and hat.

After layering up, I quickly feel better, well enough to eat a more substantial snack of trail mix and fig bars — about 600 calories down the hatch like it’s nothing at all. Alertness filters back into my brain, which had been foggy to the point of sleepwalking for an hour at least. It is 2:30 p.m. and the sun is leaving. Sunset is imperceptible in this black-and-white landscape save for a subtle pink glow on the tips of the rounded ridgeline above.

December 20, 2023. 9.25 miles, 617 feet climbing. Starting temp: -5°F. Overcast and breezy. Time on the trail: Five hours, 8 minutes.

Short day to our favorite cabin in the White Mountains, Caribou Bluff. This lovely cabin is situated on a narrow ridge above Fossil Creek, surrounded by craggy limestone summits. My pace has been brutally slow all morning, well under 2 mph as I slog up a gradual rise away from Beaver Creek. What is wrong? Is it a simple strength discrepancy? Is my body shutting down? I’ve overlayered to compensate for yesterday’s chill. It’s cold in this valley — I can tell by the hoarfrost collecting on my sled bag — and the breeze remains stiff. Inside my wind-protective clothing, I’m sweating because I’m working so hard. I don’t mind. It’s a short day to the cabin, even if short is five hours of back-breaking effort.

I skirt around a scary open lead on Fossil Creek, daring myself to look down at the gurgling current for the thrill it provides. I could use the adrenaline boost. Beat made this crossing safely, but that does not guarantee that I will as well. The landscape, seemingly frozen in time, is constantly changing. Overflow seeps up from the ground and coats the trail in gray ice. Creeks and rivers continue flowing beneath sheets of snow-covered ice, opening leads and forming hollow ice shelves. Bolstered by my “conquering” of the unpredictable creek, I march resolutely the final mile to the cabin as limestone jags bask in crimson alpenglow.

December 21, 2023. 22.8 miles, 2,467 feet climbing. Starting temp: -11°F. Partly cloudy and calm. Time on the trail: Eleven hours, 48 minutes.

Solstice. Today is a beautiful day — all three hours of it at 65.5° North. It may be the shortest day of the year, but here the beauty of light stretches on indefinitely. We start walking in an encompassing dark tinged with the subtle glow of the aurora borealis. Within an hour — just before 9 a.m. — purple strips of light are already appearing over the cliffs above Fossil Creek. I watch for hours as the light cast on the snow shifts through infinite shades of blue, blues that have never appeared before me in “real life,” surreal colors that we haven’t named or created the language to describe. Then pinks begin to appear, and then the oranges, and then the deep yellow glow of the lazy sun peeks out behind a bank of clouds. This is all I have been doing today — watching the light. I’m walking, too, but really, I’m just watching the light.

It is after 4 p.m. by the time the light fades enough to break its enchantment. I finally pull over for my first real break of the day. A tiny trail shelter is located six miles from my destination — 17 miles from where I started. Although I certainly have not been moving quickly and my body feels sore when I stop, somehow eight hours and 17 miles passed more or less without notice. A thermometer at the trail shelter indicates it is -15°F. I break out my stove to heat water for tea and a cup of mac & cheese. I sit on the narrow bunk of the shelter to savor my hot things and soak in my awesomeness, because honestly I’m feeling awesome right now and it’s okay to feel this way. If I can derive self-esteem from being slow in an extremely esoteric sport and moderately self-sufficient at -15°F … well, why not?

December 22, 2023. 18.8 miles, 2,224 feet climbing. Starting temp: -6°F. Partly cloudy and clearing. Time on the trail: Nine hours, 25 minutes.

I am tired today. The winter light has reached the apex of beauty, with clear skies revealing all of the shades of pink and orange. Rich colors saturate the delicate hoarfrost that now coats everything after days of subzero temperatures. I relish the scenery, but my mind is struggling to stave off my body’s complaints.

I cue up an audiobook about the USS Jeannette, a failed American expedition to the Arctic in 1879 — the last time anyone tried to reach the North Pole by ship. It’s wild what people believed as recently as the 1880s — that a warm current flowed through the ice cap to the pole, which credible scientists believed could be a lush paradise fed by thermal heat from the Earth’s core. After the Jeannette was frozen into the pack ice and crushed, the crew had to venture into completely unknown landscapes: first by sledge, then in tiny boats across the Arctic sea, and finally on foot carrying almost nothing in a sparsely populated region of Northern Siberia. Only a third of the men survived. That any of them survived is a miracle. Hours slip away as I imagine how I might cope in similar scenarios, knowing what I know now but also only possessing the resources they had then.

In four days on the trail, I’ve only seen a handful of people besides Beat — a couple of snowmobiles and a musher on the first day, a musher and a snowmobiler yesterday. This country is not nearly as sparse as the Arctic in the 1880s, but at times it feels close.

As the sun reaches its shallow apex around 12:40 p.m., our friends Corrine and Eric pass on their bicycles. They’re planning to spend the next two nights in cabins with us, which will be a fun change from our quiet nights so far. They’re upbeat because it’s a gorgeous day, and we chat for a few minutes. Afterward, they seem to float up the trail on their bikes as if it’s no effort at all. Of course, I know better — I’ve ridden a fat bike on this trail a time or two before — but I can’t help but feel a pang of envy. I have at least five more hours of laborious manhauling to complete before I reach the cabin. I would prefer the ease of wheels right now.

As the light fades, so too does my jealousy. I’m tracing the contours of a rolling ridge where the forest has burned to husks but the views stretch out for miles. The nearly full moon rises over brilliant pink summits. The skeletal spruce trees are entirely coated in frost, lending a ghostly air to this vast place. As the sun weakens further, the moon grows brighter. I don’t even need a headlamp to see Beat’s footprints on the trail. The ghost trees cast eerie shadows across the snow. Hints of green light flicker to the north, but clouds are returning to that horizon, obscuring the aurora. Still, I’m in awe.

Overhead, the Big and Little Dippers glimmer. Stars upon stars begin to appear behind them. I crane my neck to watch the night sky deepen. As a watcher, I forge my connection with the universe. I am infinitesimal and the universe is infinite, and yet I am a part of it, built from the stars to return to the stars. The peace I feel is fathomless.

December 23, 2023. 9.2 miles, 646 feet climbing. Starting temp: 10°F. Partly cloudy and breezy. Time on the trail: Three hours, 40 minutes.

When I awake in the morning, my chest feels heavy. Last night I had a mild asthma attack — too much watching of the stars, too little paying attention to my heavy breathing into the cold headwind without face protection. My inflamed airways began to close up about a mile from the cabin. My inhaler was partially frozen despite keeping it in an interior pocket near my chest; the medicine came out in useless spurts. All I could do was walk and focus on squeezing the carbon dioxide out of my lungs through an alarming chorus of gurgling and wheezing. Within minutes of pulling the buff over my face, my breathing improved.

But today I am paying for my inattention. I have a headache and wonder if my blood oxygen is down. At least the day ahead isn’t a difficult one. We only have to walk nine miles to the next cabin, and warmer temperatures mean the glide is better for my sled — which is about eight pounds lighter from all of the food I’ve eaten so far. Manhauling sure is hungry work.

The short day is again a beautiful one, and the sun is still hovering over the horizon when I arrive at Moose Creek cabin. Eric is outside gathering dead spruce even though the firewood shed is nearly full. He’s doing the labor because he enjoys it, because he dragged his snowshoes out here and might as well use them, and to “appease the cabin gods” as he likes to say.

Inside the cabin, we enjoy a long evening of snacking, reading, laughing, overfiring the stove, stripping down to our underwear in the heat, racing outside in my underwear, because propane leaked inside the cabin and my ragged lungs are still sensitive, and returning for my warm puffy things so I can sit out on the porch and watch the night sky deepen. These are simple days. Simple days are happy days. I wish we could make them last.

December 24, 2023. 15.8 miles, 1,969 feet climbing. Starting temp: 20°F. Partly cloudy turning to fog. Time on the trail: Six hours, 18 minutes.

Christmas Eve. Today I am feeling nostalgic and missing my family, perhaps because it’s time to hike out. Six days away from civilization is not a lot, and yet in this uber-connected world, the remove feels strange. I haven’t a clue about what’s going on in the world. All 17 hours and 30 minutes of my audiobook are nearly complete in three days, and my mind has started to indulge in the delusion that I too am traveling through 1880s Siberia.

The snow is warm and fast, and my sled is as light as it will ever be — which is not light. Still, all of my warm and puffy things let me feel content while removed from civilization. It’s a lot of stuff for some, but overall it’s not a lot, and it’s all I need. If I had a replenishable source of food and fuel, I could keep going indefinitely. The men on the Jeannette started with a massive ship and tons of supplies, and in the end, they didn’t even have the boots on their feet because they had eaten them. I thought about how most of us go through life this way — striving and acquiring and consuming, striving and acquiring and consuming. And yet at the end, we are all barefoot and naked … and alone … as we step into the universe.

December 29, 2023. 19.2 miles, 3,000 feet climbing. Starting temp: -21°F. Clear and cold. Time on the trail: Eight hours, 57 minutes.

For five days we returned to civilization, or at least the outpost of civilization called Fairbanks. We enjoyed a Christmas celebration with Corrine and Eric, and then Beat and I had to return to our usual work weeks — at least what passes for a work week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. My body was battered and resting would have been the prudent choice, but I still went running every day because I could not get enough of this beautiful solstice light. At home, I shiver in temperatures near freezing and will continue to do so in January. But for a short time, subzero temperatures began to feel normal, even pleasant.

The second trip had us traveling on a more remote trail south of the White Mountains, the McKay Creek Trail, over a series of steep domes to Cache Mountain cabin. Corrine reserved this trip as it’s one of her favorites, but she was feeling under the weather as the weekend approached and decided to hold off for a day.

Beat and I set out alone for the frigid Chatanika River Valley, where temperatures have dropped south of -20°F and the waning moonlight greets us. Starting up the six-mile climb, my legs feel as though they’d had unlearned everything we’d achieved a week earlier. Beat is moving at least twice as fast as me. Within minutes, I’m alone.

This day, though. This clear, cold day. My sluggish body is all but pinned to the Earth, yet my mind is soaring through the surreal beauty all around me. If only I could describe this light! Many hills bring many vistas — the bald white peaks to the north, the forested domes to the south, and the braided frozen creeks slicing through drainages below.

The last of this otherworldly light has faded into long purple twilight by the time I cross Beaver Creek, where the temperature is well below -30°F. As frightened as I am of ice crossings, I can’t but stop mid-river and take in the expansive silence. This depth of quiet needs to be experienced to understand it. At 30 below, the smallest sounds can carry for miles. This is the utter absence of sound. I imagine I am floating in deep space.

Despite my fear of asthma attacks, I pull down my buff to take in a deep breath of air so sharp it must be tasted to understand it. I’d describe the taste as cold metal with a hint of sweetness, but this is a poor description because deep subzero air is delicious. Forbidden, but delicious.

December 30, 2023. 22.4 miles, 2,215 feet climbing. Starting temp: 10°F. Overcast and windy. Time on the trail: Eight hours, 35 minutes.

I awaken to a dream about my father. I’ve woken to many dreams about my father this week, in a place where I sleep deeply due to exhaustion but wake up frequently due to strange sensations from the cold cabin or a full bladder from overeager hydration. In this dream, I am wrapped in a white blanket and lying across the vinyl-covered back seat of a car. I am pretending to sleep when Dad opens the door and reaches in. He holds me and I can tell I am a small person because my nose presses into his chest as my legs curl against his side. I feel safe and warm, eternally safe and warm. I will stay here forever, I think. Then I hear a quiet, distant “Meow,” and this is Beat trying to wake me up.

“It’s really windy today,” Beat says ruefully as he loads up the stove with meager sticks of firewood. I sit up and listen. The roof rattles and a shutter knocks loudly against the cabin’s large window. “There was no hook to keep it open,” Beat explains.

Outside, the temperature is “warm” — 10 above — but the wind is fearsome. Gusts likely top 30 mph. The trail to the outhouse has already drifted in. This feels less like magical Alaska and more like the unforgiving mountains of Colorado. We have plans for an unloaded — or at least sled-free — hike to a high point on the trail at Cache Mountain Divide, but I think both of us are second-guessing right now. Staying warm and safe in these winds is no small feat.

After the mood-boosters of coffee and peanut butter-spiked oatmeal, we decide to attempt the Divide. We set out in the first hints of daylight through slippery snowdrifts and blasting gales. But as the gray sky lightens, so too does the wind. For a couple of hours, the sky even begins to clear. Pink light sparkles on the peaks that I can approach with great speed — about 3 mph — unhindered by a sled but still contending with spindrift across the trail.

I love the Cache Mountain Divide. I have so many intense moments stored in my memory that originated here. I think that this must be my 11th time reaching this shallow mountain pass. It strikes me as funny that I’ve spent so much time, money, and effort seeking out such a remote and relatively random place thousands of miles from where I live. We find what we love and hold onto it, no matter what it takes. I don’t think we need to apologize for that.

I spend most of the hike thinking about my Dad.

December 31, 2023. 19.2 miles, 2,149 feet climbing. Starting temp: -8°F. Partly cloudy and breezy. Time on the trail: Seven hours, 41 minutes.

Corrine and Eric couldn’t make it to the cabin. They made a valiant effort. But after 12 miles of pedaling and pushing their bikes through increasingly deep snow drifts, they decided to call it. Friday night’s wind has all but erased the trail in open areas. We received the news via satellite messenger last night and braced ourselves for a tough hike out on New Year’s Eve.

We are out of the cabin by 7:30 a.m. Yesterday’s clouds have cleared, leaving behind a dusting of new snow and deepening cold. With tightly clamped snowshoes reducing the blood flow to our feet, we stomp through a thin layer of windcrust over drifted powder. The effort should feel significantly harder than the previous days, but I feel inexplicably strong. Beat is breaking trail, but being second in line isn’t exactly a free ride. Still, I’m nearly able to keep up with him, at least for the first half of the day.

Despite this strange burst of physical strength, my mind is foggy. I can’t muster the attention for yet another audiobook about polar exploration (on this trip I finished yet another, “Madhouse at the End of the Earth,” which was even better than the first!) So I turn on my early 2010s iPod Shuffle, which — like the Mountain Hardwear wind fleece that hasn’t been manufactured since 2013 but which is the only layer I’ve found can keep me warm and dry in nearly any condition — is a long outmoded piece of gear that I can’t live without.

This two-gigabyte collection of music includes Pearl Jam’s “Yellow Ledbetter.” Within seconds, my mind is whisked away to the cab of my parents’ 1994 Toyota Pickup, beside the shadow of my 16-year-old self. She’d been released early from her night job at Wendy’s, and took advantage of her extended curfew to drive the truck up to the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Together we look up at the canyon’s granite walls reflecting the silver moonlight, which mirrors the moonlit slopes above present-day Beaver Creek. She liked to come here to watch the universe go by. I can almost feel what she feels, gazing in wonder at a night sky that was once filled with infinite possibilities. Of course, it still is, but sometimes it’s more difficult to see with weary eyes.

The next song on the Shuffle is “The Internet” by Manchester Orchestra, from an album I must have listened to on repeat 50 times or more after my dad died in June 2021. The two weeks surrounding the funeral have nearly been wiped from my memory, all except for the bicycle rides I embarked on nightly after Mom went into her room but before the summer solstice sun set. I’d aim for Little Cottonwood Canyon, grinding up a vertical mile of elevation gain on blindingly steep grades. Sufficiently numbed, I’d pedal, listen to my sad music, and cry until I was a hollow shell, spiritually naked and barefoot before a universe that appeared to be closing in. And yet, I kept going.

I think about these two versions of myself and how they’re linked by the thinnest threads of time. Those figures were me and now they’re shadows, but the way they hover so close to the surface brings a sense of peace. Just like the dreams about my Dad … so close to the surface. Break those threads of time, and we can be everywhere. Together.

Daylight again creeps over the horizon, and this daydream fades. Fatigue returns. For hours I walk in a daze with my head encrusted in ice. More clouds move in. The temperature warms up to something that feels tropical but is probably around 10 above. I pull a big bag of popcorn out of my sled and munch on it cheerfully while walking. I’m passed by a family of four on two snowmobiles. The young boy driving one of the large machines drops his cargo sled right in the middle of the trail. Twenty minutes later, the boy and his dad return on one machine to retrieve it. I’m passed by a musher who drops an unused pack of Kleenex, which I pick up and keep for myself. Civilization creeps closer. The back-breaking six-mile climb from the first day is now a six-mile descent. Friday’s winds skipped this valley, and the trail is bomb-proof. It would be a shame not to bomb down it. I start running. I pick up speed. My sled lolls lazily behind me because I am not actually moving all that fast, but I feel like I’m flying. Muscles in my legs that haven’t been used in days — put into sleep mode to shunt energy toward the hamstrings, glutes, and quads that provide the most power — come to life. The sensation is thrilling.

Still, after a few minutes, I stop running. I don’t want this trip to end. By this time tomorrow, we’ll be in Seattle, languishing in plastic chairs during a long layover at the airport. By the time it’s fully 2024, we’ll be back in Colorado, where the winter sun climbs so high that you have to wear sunglasses, patches of old snow dot the otherwise brown foothills, and the January doldrums await.

For now, the temperature is falling back to -9°F, and the world is still brilliantly painted in shades of silver, blue, and white. This place feels like a dream. Perhaps it’s always been a dream … just close to the surface.