The Honesty of Winter

A journey into the wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most non-privileged of pleasures. Anyone with two legs and the price of a pair of army surplus combat boots may enter
~~ Ed Abbey ~~

There is no doubt that it is good to be home - in Alaska. But it took a while to settle into the rhythm of winter - the sequestered life during the 5th coldest January on record and the uptick in energy as the light and relative warmth bathed interior Alaska in February.

The hard-packed trails of the Yukon Quest dog race now lure us into the wilderness, offering tantalizing thoughts of just staying on the trail among the grey jays, moose, and northern lights - away from the the myriad of busy human things that capture our attention each day. In retrospect that may have been safer than driving home.

While Abbey has long provided inspiration, I have to admit I moved beyond his army surplus combat boots for Alaskan adventures - a FatBack bike booted with big "Fat Larry" and "Endomorph" tyres to keep it floating across the snow.

I think I've always felt safer out there in the wilderness, but will need to resort back to those combat boots for a while after Ben slid into oncoming traffic - writing off a bike and two cars. As Abbey would have said "the road was the problem."

The Same Cold

In Minnesota the serious cold arrived
like no cold I'd previously experienced,
an in-your-face honesty to it, a clarity
that always took me by surprise.
On blizzard nights with wires down
or in the dead-battery dawn
the cold made good neighbors of us all,
made us moral because we might need
something moral in return, no hitchhiker
left on the road, not even some frozen
strange-looking stranger turned away
from our door. After a spell of it,
I remember, zero would feel warm—
people out for walks, jackets open,
ice fishermen in the glory
of their shacks moved to Nordic song.
The cold took over our lives,
lived in every conversation, as compelling
as local dirt or local sport.
If bitten by it, stranded somewhere,
a person would want
to lie right down in it and sleep.
Come February, some of us needed
to scream, hurt ourselves, divorce.
Once, on Route 23, thirty below,
my Maverick seized up, and a man
with a blanket and a candy bar, a man
for all weather, stopped and drove me home.
It was no big thing to him, the savior.
Just two men, he said, in the same cold

~~ Stephen Dunn ~~