As anyone who’s spent much time with me can attest, I am neither particularly athletic nor someone who could accurately be described as much of a “go-getter.” I’m sort of medium at most things I do. I might refer to my ability level as “serviceable” if I felt extra confident in a given skill, but the label of “expert,” in my case, could really only be applied to activities like napping and selecting pizza toppings.
Kids at work ask me all the time where I live. I always point at my little Kelty two-man tent, and they almost never believe me.
“No way, Miss!” they exclaim in a tone of mixed disbelief and curiosity. I must seem almost crazy enough for it to be true. The tents we set up for kids will sleep ten in a pinch; my tiny two-man (which is for one person, really) looks to them far too small to sleep even one adult human. Often, a kid will ask if it’s a tent for dogs. They want to know if I have a TV in there.
Summer has (kind of) arrived in Alaska, and not a moment too soon. Temperatures soared above 80 degrees last week, and while that may not exactly sound like a heat wave to people who live in areas with normal weather patterns, I’ll remind you that we experienced forty degrees below zero this winter. My friend Hannah’s doctor fiancé told me yesterday that he diagnosed several cases of heat rash this week, which I’m taking as proof that Alaskans have devolved into cold-bloodedness and are not meant to be warmed above about 60 degrees. Still, my friends are loving it: we are jogging on the formerly-Nordic trails, canoeing around the lake rather than skiing across it, and climbing rock instead of ice.
Continue reading “To Alder Hell and Back Again: Alderfest 2013”
For the better part of my childhood (and by childhood, I mean age five or so to the present day), anytime I was cold for more than about an hour, I absolutely insisted I was being frostbitten. Despite my tendency toward melodrama, I have always enjoyed cold weather activities, even the ones I suspected might result in frostbite.
Whenever I find myself in a sticky or otherwise unpleasant situation, I draw upon the wisdom of Mark Twight, a prolific alpinist and writer who initially rose to fame after his first ascent of “The Reality Bath,” a since-unrepeated ice climb in the Canadian Rockies described by one guidebook author as “so dangerous as to be of little value except to those suicidally inclined.” So, this guy is not fucking around. There are lots of little Twightisms, and when the going gets rough, I use them to remind myself that nothing worth doing comes without a little (or, as the case may be, a lot of) suffering.
Continue reading “Fact: It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.”
my alaskan odyssey 