If there's one life lesson that has really been trying to impress itself upon me over the last year or so, it's the necessity of hydration. Living in a frozen dessert? Strenuously hiking above 10,000 feet? Repeatedly skiing when it's below zero out? Hey lady: for fuck's sake, drink some more water. "*This* time," I say (for the umpteenth time), "ok, I got it!" I guess I took the whole thick-blooded thing too literally, and I don't have Kelly with me to set a good example draining endless water bottles.
But I made real progress wearing my jacket to stave off the cold. A group of us drove about fifty miles north to poke around some old trapper cabins and cross the boundary into Gates of the Arctic National Park. I started off with a t-shirt, two wool base layers, thick hoodie, my trusty hobo down jacket, and dad's winter coat, for a total of three hoods and a hat. One cabin had a wood stove but was built primarily for summer use -- the windows were partially framed, and bits of cotton batting, socks, old pens, and gum wrappers were stuffed around the edges for insulation. The previous inhabitants left behind a solid VHS collection of '90s movies, some old National Geographics, headlamps, spices and soup mixes, and not totally tasteless nudie calendars.
After examining said domestic comforts, we set out along a creek, ultimately to its convergence with the Dietrich River (or maybe the river was over the hills in front of us, I'm not entirely sure, but we were in the vicinity). The scenery was stunningly snow-covered, and we made our way to an electric-blue overflow, where a small fountain bubbled up out of the frozen creek in one place, and flooded the embankment in another so that a refrozen skating rink formed between the trees. It was like a "Nutcracker" ballet set come to life.
Gates of the Arctic is special not just because of its remoteness, but also because it's free of any trails, markers, or development -- it is preserved wilderness. Wikipedia tells me it is entirely north of the Arctic Circle, and roughly the size of Belgium. So we barely nudged our way in, courtesy of the winter-highways of frozen creeks and rivers.
Back here at Camp, we finally had a fire in the Big Tent. It's an aluminum-frame structure covered with thick plastic, about 40' X 15' with 20' ceiling, and a double-barrel (previously oil barrels?) homemade wood stove. We got the metal to glow red and toasted a coworker who's leaving for a few weeks of vacation. In a little over a month I'll be leaving, so I'm trying to keep drinking it all in.
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