It's just life on Earth, part three

One of my most vivid memories of the office where I worked in Juneau is actually a memory of a memory. I was walking across the parking lot amid the eerie emptiness of 2 a.m. The wind was howling as streaks of rain tore through a yellow beam of light. I looked toward the light's source — a street lamp — and lapsed into an evocative flashback of the golden moon rising over the Susitna Valley. A sense of peace surged through my blood. "If everyone could experience the Susitna 100, we'd all be so much happier," I thought, smiling knowingly at my unlikely discovery some months earlier — the powerful joy that lies just beyond the threshold of fear and exhaustion. Of course, I hadn't actually discovered a sweeping cure for the ills of the modern first world. I'd only discovered an esoteric quirk within myself, one that meant I'd never again fit in outside the community of weirdoes who feel compelled to ride bikes a hundred miles across frozen wilderness. 

On the morning of day three, the temperature was 16 below. In 48 hours we had yet to see our thermometers register anything in the positive digits. As one does with increased exposure, we'd adapted nicely to the negative teens. I was making trips to the outhouse wearing only underwear and down booties, then taking an unhurried couple of minutes to examine my bare legs for bruises (damage from earlier falls on overflow) while I sat on the styrofoam seat. While packing up to leave in the morning, I spent more than 10 minutes fiddling with the attachments to my harness, securing my sled bag, and strapping on snowshoes without bothering to put on gloves. My fingers weren't even that cold. It's amazing how well my hands adapt to the cold. Starting out cold is a completely different beast, though, as is 30 or 40 below. I know this all too well, and was grateful for the simple ease of shelter and more friendly subzero temperatures.

My main complaint, unsurprisingly, was my legs. They hurt. In some ways it felt as though they never recovered from my March races. Instead, my frayed hamstrings had remained in stasis, unused for nine whole months until the snow and sled forced them back to work. "This does not bode well for Nome 2020," I thought. The trek to Nome is actually something I'd started to think about again, only because I was feeling so good otherwise. I was breathing well, and even the hardest pulls up steep hills didn't leave me gasping. My blood remained rich with oxygen, which meant I didn't become a brain-dead zombie. I could do a lot of thinking out here. I don't know if that was a good thing.

On this day we had 20 miles to travel between Caribou Bluff and Eleazar's cabin. The first 10 miles followed the punchy track we'd traveled on the first day. Then there were nine miles on a well-traveled trail that we knew would zip by, and the final mile was on a steep pitch that gains 600 feet. This climb has taken me as much as an hour to ascend in the past (soft snow, tired legs ... actually, that was the effort I usually blame for ruining my legs whenever my legs hurt — the infamous cabin trip of March 18, 2018.) So this wouldn't be an easy day, but at least everything was known.

The late morning hours were cool and gray, and wading the punchy track with sore legs became tedious. We'd removed our snowshoes prematurely — the hope for hardened trail springs eternal — and I was still breaking through to my knees in places. Past experience should have taught me by now that it is *always* better to wear snowshoes in soft conditions — the same as the universal fat bike mantra, "when it doubt, let air out." But that doesn't change the fact that snowshoes hurt my feet, and I will probably forever be stubborn about it.


Instead I let the physical frustration build and distracted my mind with memories and songs. "Life on Earth" by Snow Patrol:

All this ancient wildness, 
That we don't understand. 
The first sound of a heartbeat.
To riots roaring on.

As we commenced the long climb out of the Beaver Creek valley, Beat pointed out strips of pink light stretched across the hills.

And then, at the top of the climb, an elusive orb burst over the southern horizon and cast beams of light — real, direct sunlight — right into our path. It was the first we'd seen of the sun all week.


It had been a mere seven days since we left Colorado, our home that famously receives an overabundance of sunlight, so we're hardly deprived. And I consider myself the opposite of a sun-worshiper. I fear the sun, in the way only fellow fair-skinned white people can understand, and hide from it all summer long with SPF 50 and arm sleeves and long pants. But on this day, even that tiny dose of low, heatless sunlight felt like an enormous burst of energy. I was completely revitalized. Even my legs seemed to hurt less.


Flurries of snow filled the air, sparkling like stars against the dark clouds overhead. It was absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. These photos are of course a great disappointment to me, as they always are, as they can never capture the heat and energy surging through my body, the sweet metallic taste of the subzero air, the pink light so rich and incandescent it seemed as though the entire frozen landscape was ablaze. It's a strange paradox, visiting the land of darkness and ice to experience the heights of lightness and warmth, but this has long been my truth.

This is life on Earth ... an Earth undergoing such rapid change that even my meager human lifespan can't keep up. One of my greatest fears is that I'll live long enough to witness the end of such beauty. But I know, I know. Despair is the province of cowards. I can choose to not be afraid. Because I shouldn't fear the future. Everything changes drastically, given a long enough timeline. Beauty goes on. Light goes on. What was it that Camus wrote … “I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”

Here is where I note that most of this day's string of consciousness was inspired by Albert Camus, the existentialist author who wrote about the metaphysical tension that arises when people attempt to impose order and meaning on an indifferent universe. The previous evening, I had a hard time sleeping and felt bored with the adventure books that clutter my Kindle. So I scrolled a dozen pages back and re-opened "The Myth of Sisyphus." I first read these essays in college, then returned to them in 2015 while attempting a solo ride along Alaska's western coast. I did the majority of my reading while burrowed in my sleeping bag in an unheated shelter cabin during a fierce windstorm, and clung to every word as a personal philosophy on which to blame my terrible journey. I was reminded of Camus again when Beat showed me a New Yorker cartoon about the “Instagram of Sisyphus,” which is so funny and such fitting commentary for the community I call my own that it almost made me feel sad. Then again, wasn’t finding joy in futility exactly what Camus saw in the Myth of Sisyphus?

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I still find myself returning to this place, which for me will probably always be the Susitna River Valley in February 2006. The convergence of power and frailty, of exhilaration and anguish. The beginning. A person can experience such an awakening only once. That we might spend the rest of our lives chasing the intensity of a revelatory first, only to find it slipping farther into the past ... is that just sad? Like Cartoon Sisyphus? 

"Rise and grind! Remember the universe rewards those who don't give up!" 

Maybe this is why I feel stalled out with my endurance endeavors right now — everything feels like an exercise in futility, and yet the struggle towards the heights does fill my heart. I haven’t found a similar depth of intensity or emotion in any other medium. I still want to pursue these experiences, but I feel like my body isn’t going to cooperate. I can’t predict performance anymore, and I can’t simply train away my inadequacies. Is there a way to hold onto motivation amid the uncertainty? Is there any chance of success? As long as I believe my successes are just a random occurrence of good luck on a curve I can’t control, then what am I even pursuing? 

One Camus quote lingered: “From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt — that is the whole question.” 

Then there’s Cartoon Sisyphus and his Instagram page … struggling without hope of success, and yet eternally excited about rolling a rock up a mountain. He accepts that there is nothing more to life than an absurd struggle, and finds joy in this. 

The sun continued to creep beneath a break in the clouds along the southern horizon — the thinnest sliver of clearing was all it took to cast its glorious light across the land all of the live-long day.

It had the coolest effect — bold, almost primary colors painted within perfectly defined lines. The land looked like a piece of pop art, purposefully designed for the order-seeking human eye.

As we turned to climb the hill toward Eleazars, I realized I hadn't felt a hint of leg pain since the sun came out. All is perception, truly. I managed to roll my rock ... er, drag my sled ... up the climb without too much exertion. This cabin did not have much firewood left behind, so we used the remaining minutes of daylight to hike a short distance down to a burned area. Interior Alaska's spindly spruce with their shallow roots are the perfect kind of tree to just wrap one's arms around and pull out of the ground, no chainsaws needed. It's great fun, tearing down dead trees with your bare hands. Dragging them up the hill, however, is quite a bit more work. I noted with some pride that my shoulder lifts at the gym have been helpful, although my muscles did eventually fail and I dropped a big pile shortly before reaching the cabin. Beat went to work sawing the trunks into logs and chopping the logs into firewood while I gathered snow for drinking water.

That kind of backbreaking labor is deeply satisfying, probably for the same primal reasons that leave us more content in motion than we are at rest. The cycle of expending life to sustain life. Maybe this is ... all there is.

Camus wrote, "You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know ... So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning."

It's just life on Earth, part two

On the most disheartening days of the news cycle, I soothe myself with fantasies about bowing out of humanity. A little log cabin off the grid, deep in Interior Alaska. Living off a yearly mail drop of letters from loved ones, hardtack and butter. No Internet. All of my energy will be spent just trying to survive. It's not that I want to leave this world. I love this world. It's possible that I love this world more than life, which evokes guilt about my selfish existence. But the thing is, I also love life — fiercely, zealously, all the way to its hard edges. I'm not particularly blessed with hard-woman skills, just desire. I'd be the type who would fall and break a bone while gathering firewood, and freeze to death on tundra. So maybe I'll rethink this fantasy. Still, it's not the worst way to go. At least I'd be minerals to give back to the land I love most. 

By morning, the air inside Caribou Bluff cabin was three-liters-of-water-is-now-half-frozen degrees. Outside it was -18F. Beat got the wood stove going and the 10-by-12-foot interior soon warmed. We poured boiled snow over instant oatmeal with a dollop of peanut butter — the kind of food that seems sort of gross when you're packing for a trip, but by the time you return home, the warm memories linger and you wish you could eat only this.

We already knew the trail dead-ended beyond the cabin, but wanted to head out for a day trip. Beat suggested exploring the Fossil Gap Trail, which on this day was just an idea on a map. We set out a little before 11 a.m., when there still wasn't enough daylight to capture non-blurry photos while walking. This didn't stop me from trying. Deathly still air drained the warmth from my fingers, as though I'd plunged my bare hand into ice water. The sensation was exhilarating.

Fossil Gap is one of few trails left in the White Mountains that I have yet to explore. As one of the most remote trails, Fossil Gap is almost never broken out, and it's a long way to go to find out there's no trail to follow. Tracing the route on my GPS, it was clear that the first mile or two of the trail didn't just parallel Fossil Creek; it actually overlapped it. The creek was the trail. And having not been broken out before, we'd be forced to feel out untested ice.

I'm strongly afraid of river travel (yes, Fossil Creek is a creek in Alaska, but if this waterway was located in Colorado, it would be designated as a river.) Such travel becomes exponentially scarier at temperatures lower than -20F. But there were a few reasons we decided to test these waters. We both dream of potentially more remote expeditions in Alaska, where winter river navigation would be a necessary skill. Fossil Creek is never that deep, so the chance of a catastrophic collapse was small, and even if we broke in above our knees, there were two of us to help each other. We brought along all the necessary safety gear for a quick warm-up if needed. We both wore water-repellent overboots. Beat took the lead, gently tapping the ice with his poles, listening for hollow sounds. If we saw caribou tracks we used them, reasoning that caribou weigh a bit more than us, and the surface area of each hoof is much smaller than our snowshoe-clad feet.

It was going well until we encountered a log jam. Looking for a way around, Beat veered too close to the shore and broke through a brittle layer of ice into shin-deep water. From my stance it looked worse than it was, and I froze in panic as he continually crashed into the slush while trying to step onto a more solid shelf. I was in full deer-in-headlights mode, waiting for the entire creek to swallow both of us. All of the blood drained from my extremities, and my knees felt weak. My overreaction would have been comical if it didn't bode so poorly for handling such situations in the future. Finally I stammered, "What can I do to help?" Beat found solid purchase and pulled his sled through the water and onto the ice. "Go around," he replied.

I found a way through the log jam as Beat brushed instantly-formed icicles from his legs. The overboots kept his feet dry, and he wanted to continue. I was boiling with fear-induced adrenaline and just wanted to keep moving in any direction. I remembered the importance of building good decision-making skills and tried to bite back my fear. We continued another half mile until we encountered a river-wide lead, where we could hear water gurgling underneath paper-thin ice. The alders along each shoreline were exceptionally thick, and the ice lining the shore sounded hollow enough that trying to bridge a way around the lead would not be trivial.

"Let's turn around!" I suggested all too eagerly. Beat was not convinced. This was a problem he might need to solve for real someday. He stood pondering for several minutes before agreeing with me that portaging a sled while wearing hip waders was just a little too complex for a day hike.

As we slowly retraced our steps, adrenaline and minus-20 air was draining all of the life from my blood, so I distracted myself with my 2018 theme song thought experiment. One of the songs that got me through my march to McGrath earlier in the year was "Lead, S.D." by Manchester Orchestra. Beyond the appropriate images the lyrics evoked during a three-day span where it rarely stopped snowing, there was a strange sort of hopeful longing amid the hopelessness.

The snow is piling up, our temporary grid. 
It was just like this, this time last year. 
There's nothing in the wind, just white up to the trees, 
And it's been that way for eternity.

I gazed north across the cusp of a wilderness that remained more or less unbroken all of the way to the Arctic Ocean, and thought that perhaps a better Manchester Orchestra song to encapsulate the year would be "Simple Math."

What if we’ve been trying to get to where we’ve always been? 
What if we’ve been trying to get to where we’ve always been? 
Simple math, believe me, all is brilliant. 
What if we've been trying to kill the noise and silence?

We reached the Caribou Bluff trail junction, and Beat asked me if I wanted to hike back a ways on our trail from the previous day. Of course I did, as the sun was still "high" in the sky, it was a beautiful clear afternoon, and we'd only walked about three miles so far. But I'd spent all of my energy in one big burst of fear. My adrenals were empty, and I felt more exhausted than I had after all of the 30 miles we hiked the previous day.

Still, beauty and intrigue will always win over fatigue in my world. We marched back across the valley and climbed the bluff dividing the Fossil Creek and Beaver Creek drainages. This climb always feels like a crux during the White Mountains 100 — arriving after sunrise for my foot races, and around sunset for most of my bike years. My ego prodded me with dreams of a brilliant foot race in 2019, if only I can hold off the usual slump and train my way to a modicum of speed. "I want to be here well before dawn, in the dark," I thought. The speedy delusion filled my tired legs with energy.

Beat, who is planning to walk to Nome again, was perfectly in his element. In many ways, the Iditarod Trail is his remote cabin in the woods — the place where he goes to escape the trappings of modern life and focus on simple survival for a month out of the year. It's enough for him, at least for now.

Meanwhile, I was back to ruminating on how I might carve a place for myself in the modern world. I spent the first decade of my working life climbing a ladder into a building that was burning down, and the second sitting in a corner trying to turn an ethereal passion into something tangible. Now I'm entering the third decade, and what now?

I’m a little bit stuck right now. I feel like all I can be is either a low-wage laborer or a writer. But I’ve grown weary of the hustle, generating content in exchange for money. For similar income I’m content to seek out something more secure and mundane, like my copyediting work. If I come into need for more income, I’d happily return to full-time work with whomever will hire me. Work is work. The random things that others might pay me to do have never defined me. Although I admit, copyediting small-town newspapers has become uniquely meaningful. I can still play a tiny role in the dissemination of important information to communities — a service that I greatly value, and that is so swiftly decaying I can’t bear to look anymore. Maybe this is why I'm stuck. Watching journalism die is all I’ve done for my entire career.

All I ever wanted out of life was Truth. As the years pass, all of the truths I grew up with, and those I strived and struggled to discover, even those I believed to be immutable, have only continued to erode. No longer do people not know what is real and what isn’t real — they don’t even care. Everything about life is a story, and it’s becoming clear that we’re all just grasping at light and air, inventing our own truths.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” But I can’t save the White Mountains from climate change any more than I can save the Utah desert from the desperate enterprises of late-stage capitalism. The current political climate has made it obvious that humans are willing to destroy anything and everything for almost nothing at all. I suppose I’ve given in to despair, but it’s hard to come back from that … like standing on the rising stern of the Titanic with a bucket and thinking, “Well, I guess I could try bailing.”

Phew. This thought thread was not taking me to good places. I decided to blame crankiness caused by empty adrenals and shut it down with a few peanut butter cups and more longing gazes to the north. We were heading back the cabin as the sun was setting, which meant we'd been walking all day, even if the day was only about four hours long. I returned to singing "Simple Math" in my head.

What if I was wrong and you had never questioned it? 
What if it was true, that all we thought was right, was wrong? 
Simple math, the truth cannot be fractioned. 
I imply, I've got to get it back then.

After lunch — instant mashed potatoes in a bag, which is another disgusting food that I'd find myself remembering lovingly while surrounded by fresh fruits and vegetables in brightly lit Colorado grocery stores — we set out for a twilight stroll along the rocky spine that divides Fossil Creek Valley and Limestone Gulch. Beat was wearing his down booties and I didn't bother to pull on a face mask or mittens. It was still -21F.

Our stroll was thusly short, although we both regretted not dressing better for more extensive explorations. One last time, we returned to the little 10-by-12-foot public-use cabin nestled in the most compelling setting imaginable, equal parts fairytale and dystopia. Salmon-colored clouds reflected the light of a sun we again didn't see, and the frosted valley was a surreal shade of ocean blue. I may not have found my place within humanity or away from it, but a spot like this is nearly the perfect bridge. 

It's just life on Earth, part one

For the past 10 years, the last image I see at night, in those seconds of viscous limbo between consciousness and sleep, is nearly always the same. It's midnight in the boreal forest, with frosted trees rendered in silver beneath the moonlight. A black figure creeps along the edges and passes into an illuminated spot of light in the foreground: A lynx, with muscled shoulders and shimmering blue-tinted fur, looks up to reveal the depths of its sea-green eyes. This is where the flickering dream ends. Sometimes I startle awake and remember the incandescent clarity of those eyes, and this fills me with longing. 

After several years of mostly playing around during our holiday training trips to Fairbanks, we've finally established a schedule that will better prepare us for the rigors of the Iditarod Trail (which Beat races every year, and I race some years while feeling too unprepared or unfit or burnt out to sign up for the others, but end up wishing I was racing anyway.) Thanks to Beat's tireless efforts and a 2 a.m. alarm for most of the nights spanning the last week of November, we'd booked five nights straight in the White Mountains. From Dec. 26 to 31, we'd be off the grid with no supplied source of water, heat or electricity, seeking shelter in tiny log cabins accessible only by winter trail, at times more than 30 miles from the nearest road. We hedged our bets with some conservative bookings, but our hopeful plan would take us more than a 100 miles through the subzero wilderness, dragging sleds weighing upwards of 60 pounds.

I had done no specific training for this journey. I realize, as I near 40, that I really can't get away this anymore. My base level of strength is not that strong. Dragging a weighted sled while battling the resistance of soft snow requires more power than my muscles can easily give. I now understand that a spring and summer full of leg presses, squats, deadlifts, etc. at the gym, towing my 70-pound cart on dirt roads, and other tedious weight-bearing exercises are 100 percent necessary if I ever want to pursue my "ultimate challenge" of walking to Nome.

For now, even a hundred miles over five days was daunting. My quads ached following our little trip to Colorado Creek, and my hamstrings cramped up while I climbed a set of stairs during our one day off, Christmas Day. I felt anxious as we drove toward Wickersham Dome in the ominous darkness of 9 a.m. — not about the cold, remoteness or self-sufficiency of the days ahead, but about my the state of my sad little legs that hurt so badly back in March.

The temperature was a few degrees below zero when we set out at 9:30, clicking our headlamps off just a few minutes later to soak in the deep violet light of a lazy dawn. The forecast called for overcast skies and light winds, so I expected a long gray march where day wasn't all that distinguishable from night. We planned to walk 30 miles to Caribou Bluff cabin. Beat set a brisk pace from the start, and I alternated my fastest walking pace and slow jogging to keep up. That walking pace is murder for my IT bands, and the jogging feels like trying to run across the shallow end of a swimming pool. This was going to be a long 30 miles.

We dropped into the Wickersham Creek Valley, where the snowpack was so thin that it didn't even bury low-lying crowberry patches in the swamps. Frost-coated needles with berries still attached poked out of pillows of snow, an eerie apparition of summers' past. I thought back to the many times I've crossed this valley. How many? I'm not sure I could even count. The number of miles I've traveled in Alaska's White Mountains must be more than a thousand by now ... perhaps even closer to 1,500. This valley is so familiar to me, and yet still so alien. I've never seen it in the summertime.

Happy memories briefly removed my mind's focus from sore legs, the tug of an unreasonably heavy sled against my shoulders, and the thumping of my heart as I tried to catch Beat on a long straightaway. The temperature was -11F with a light breeze, which I only felt in more open areas. The frosted forest reflected strange hues of pink and turquoise, but when I looked toward the sky for hints of sunlight, all I saw was gray.


Morning imperceptibly trickled into afternoon, and then dusk. I'd landed on the perfect ratio of strenuous effort and tough-but-not-technical terrain to achieve steady flow state, and had peacefully zoned out for some time. Long minutes passed, perhaps hours, before my reverie was broken by an errant epiphany ...

"That's what my problem is! Mid-life crisis!"

Wait, what? Where did that come from? Conscious again of my aching quads and gnawing hunger, I popped a handful of trail mix in my mouth and scoured my short-term memory. The faded daydream didn't reveal itself. Was I thinking about how I don't really want to be a writer, because trying to pursue one's passion in exchange for money isn't actually that great of an idea? Was I having that fantasy about going back to work in the bagel shop again? A daydream about returning to the jobs I had when I was 16 or 17 years old is often the first weird idea that pops into my head when I ruminate on a certain upcoming birthday. I really don't want to be the type who frets about meaningless milestones, but I was rather neurotic about turning 30. Why should 40 be any different?

Every minute of rumination about the lost source of my epiphany brought more heaviness to my legs. I needed to shut this down. "Be Brave" by Modest Mouse came up on my iPod, and I cycled back to flickering memories evoked by music. "This is the theme song for 2015," I thought. Having somewhat randomly chosen "Be Brave" to represent all of 2015, I resolved to revisit every year of my life that I could remotely remember, and pick a theme song. At least this would pass the time.

2016? "Dressed in Black" by Sia. 2014? "Ends of the Earth" by Lord Huron. 

The sky dulled to a charcoal gray, only to become lighter when darkness revealed the distant lights of Fairbanks — the "Southern Lights" as we've referred to them before. Light pollution reflected from the overcast sky, illuminating the white landscape until frosted spruce branches glittered, just like my reoccurring dream. I felt safe. Calm. We passed Borealis cabin. Eighteen miles in. This distance felt like a lot, and nothing at all. "Want to keep going?" Beat asked. "I'm feeling pretty good," I nodded.

2007? "Chicago" by Sufjan Stevens. 2005? Definitely "Gray Ice Water" by Modest Mouse. 

Beyond Borealis, the trail narrowed to a single, punchy snowmobile track. We were lucky to have that, as a couple driving a snowmachine out of the Wickersham Valley stopped and told us they were the ones who had Caribou Bluff over Christmas, and had broken fresh trail the whole way out there. We were glad for their trail, but conditions were still significantly softer and more strenuous than before. My hamstrings started to cramp with every other calf-straining step. The bluff over Fossil Creek climbed interminably. There was no inversion here, and the temperature didn't rise at all. 

2002? "What Never Dies" by Sense Field. 2000? "Tomorrow Tomorrow" by Elliot Smith. 

Finally we strapped on snowshoes. Specks of white flickered in my headlamp, and I wondered if it would snow much. 

1995? Has to be "Ghost" by Clover. 1991? Ha! "Silent Lucidity" by Queensryche. 1990? (big toothy grin) "Hold On" by Wilson Phillips. 1986? That song from the Fievel movie. What was it ... An American Tail? "Somewhere Out There!" 

And there I was, dragging my snowshoe-laden feet through sugary snow in the Alaska wilderness, dredging up any memory real or fake that I could summon from second grade, feeling giddy with little-girl silliness and singing to myself: 

"And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby 

It helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky ..."

Take that, mid-life crisis.

During all of these long meanders down the darkest corridors of memory lane, I couldn't come up with a song for 2018. Everything was just too fresh, a barrage of images, too many to abridge. I decided this would be my goal for the trek — to come up with a 2018 theme song, and also to figure out the solution to this so-called mid-life crisis. If only my sad little legs could walk that long.

We climbed the last steep pitch to Caribou Bluff just after 8:30 p.m., for 11 more or less nonstop hours of laboring like a pack animal. A few stars twinkled to the north, evidence that the sky was clearing. We'd checked the junctions of Fossil Creek and Fossil Gap trails, and no trails had been broken beyond the couple's single track to the cabin. We knew we were alone out there, and that clear skies promised deepening cold. We weren't sure what tomorrow would bring. For now, all we needed to do was attend to our basic needs — fire, drinking water, dinner, and sleep. If only life was always this simple.