January 4
A new year, & with it, the strange effects of the Chinook casting warm temperatures & gale-force winds & clouds roiling in violent torsion through the sky. Each day now a little longer, measurable for us by the line of the sun on the ridge to the north of the cabin, which each day gets closer to draping over the valley on Stampede. Not yet, not yet, but closer.
Tomorrow I join the kennels folks & a ranger & head out from Stampede to the Lower Toklat, with night stops at Sushana & East Fork along the way. If you look at a map, you’ll see that after the Tek we still have a ways to go. That thumb in the park boundary gives way to a gaping landscape, the topography of which pushes us down to the East fork before ridging over to the Toklat. North of the Wyoming Hills. A part of the park I’ve never seen in any season. I’ll be starting out on snowgo, alternating from time to time with the three mushers I hope, taking the teams along a circuitous route that isn’t often traveled. I’ll of course hope for my favorite among the sled dogs, Lava & Aurora. The trail is in to Sushana, past the site of McCandless’s bus, but beyond that we’ll be navigating & breaking trail that hasn’t been put in for some time, in snow that saw forty degree days & 50 mph gusts, drifted & now settling, dense & wet, to ice over. & then overnighting in tiny patrol cabins with five of us.
I recall writing last year about the gentleman who trekked in to Wonder Lake by himself. Imagining what it must be like to experience that vastness so unpeopled & empty & quiet. & every time Kristin returns from her patrols, it is that same feeling that stirs in me—not jealousy, but a wonder begging after empathy, a keen & palpable desire to feel that largeness of the world, that smallness of the self, & to know that you found your way across dozens of miles of Alaskan wilderness in the winter to feel just such a thing. I am always amazed at what K can do, how well-acquainted she is with wilderness & its demands, & after so many years of dedicated passion, I suppose it makes sense. That she returns every time rejuvenated & awed & so fully herself is nothing short of beautiful. & it’s odd this time to be the one heading out, leaving her with the dogs here, in familiar country, in our familiar routines. She’s earned the backcountry, time & time again, & I do sometimes feel like a tourist in it, but then I remember that I was asked to do this patrol because I can offer mushing experience that no other ranger in our division has, & though I know that to be a fledgling, inchoate thing, I still can’t quite articulate the kind of pride it conjures in me. Not strictly pride in the sense of self-aggrandizement, but in the sense that I am keenly aware of how lucky I am to have that experience, of how extraordinary it is. That association with the dogs, with their fraternity, is rather something for which I am enduringly grateful. It is an association that betters me in countless ways.
To the Toklat then.
Tomorrow I join the kennels folks & a ranger & head out from Stampede to the Lower Toklat, with night stops at Sushana & East Fork along the way. If you look at a map, you’ll see that after the Tek we still have a ways to go. That thumb in the park boundary gives way to a gaping landscape, the topography of which pushes us down to the East fork before ridging over to the Toklat. North of the Wyoming Hills. A part of the park I’ve never seen in any season. I’ll be starting out on snowgo, alternating from time to time with the three mushers I hope, taking the teams along a circuitous route that isn’t often traveled. I’ll of course hope for my favorite among the sled dogs, Lava & Aurora. The trail is in to Sushana, past the site of McCandless’s bus, but beyond that we’ll be navigating & breaking trail that hasn’t been put in for some time, in snow that saw forty degree days & 50 mph gusts, drifted & now settling, dense & wet, to ice over. & then overnighting in tiny patrol cabins with five of us.
I recall writing last year about the gentleman who trekked in to Wonder Lake by himself. Imagining what it must be like to experience that vastness so unpeopled & empty & quiet. & every time Kristin returns from her patrols, it is that same feeling that stirs in me—not jealousy, but a wonder begging after empathy, a keen & palpable desire to feel that largeness of the world, that smallness of the self, & to know that you found your way across dozens of miles of Alaskan wilderness in the winter to feel just such a thing. I am always amazed at what K can do, how well-acquainted she is with wilderness & its demands, & after so many years of dedicated passion, I suppose it makes sense. That she returns every time rejuvenated & awed & so fully herself is nothing short of beautiful. & it’s odd this time to be the one heading out, leaving her with the dogs here, in familiar country, in our familiar routines. She’s earned the backcountry, time & time again, & I do sometimes feel like a tourist in it, but then I remember that I was asked to do this patrol because I can offer mushing experience that no other ranger in our division has, & though I know that to be a fledgling, inchoate thing, I still can’t quite articulate the kind of pride it conjures in me. Not strictly pride in the sense of self-aggrandizement, but in the sense that I am keenly aware of how lucky I am to have that experience, of how extraordinary it is. That association with the dogs, with their fraternity, is rather something for which I am enduringly grateful. It is an association that betters me in countless ways.
To the Toklat then.
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