Ludlow, at length

My first priority for New Year's Eve is to avoid any situation in which I might be tempted to throw bottles or sing Death Cab for Cutie. Avoiding situations in which I might find myself in over my head is necessarily a distant second.

You can do this ... I think!

*****

It's called "breaking trail" and not "blazing trail" for a reason. A single step involves heaving myself and my pack out of (in places, because I'm short) thigh-deep powder. Thankfully, wheelsucking transfers neatly out of cycling and into the snow. I spend lot of time in others' hard-won footprints.

*****

My first glimpse of the new year is a dim blue dawn framed in the mouth of our cave. I've been waiting. Still and somehow Seussian pines stand at angles, watching back and wearing white. The snow is steady and silent and I'm struck, as always, by the small flakes' carelessness, the quiet woods' disinterest in the date.

*****

Can you spot the person re-purposing a cycling jacket for snow?
Photos by Sean

Heat is easier. All your instincts—drink water, find shade, be still—are correct, whereas in cold the impulse to lie down and do nothing is, far beyond being unproductive, potentially lethal. "Don't give up!" suggests Sean, chipper. He and the other talents are bustling around our campsite like beaming REI models, which is baffling to me because—the horror!—my feet are numb. I feel decidedly un-hardy.

*****

I am on a frozen lake. A frozen lake! It's sleeping under perfect snow, all around.

 

There's a vertigo in the view, something that pulls me out of and over myself so that the scene spins below me even as I'm looking to the shore. The sensation of smallness is a comfort and embrace; I'm at once enveloped and untethered and it's peace. Why only out here? Why, elsewhere in life, is insignificance a worthlessness, a wound?

*****

On the one hand, sub-freezing temperatures are rendering many of my camping standbys—bananas, baby wipes, duct tape—totally useless. On the other hand, it's also too cold for food to fester. This opens up a  world of possibilities inadvisable in warmer conditions: fish, meat, cheese ... I could have my hand in an open jar of mayonnaise if I wanted. The ambient refrigerator in combination with the convenience of the hut (once we found it) and pleasant company of some talented backcountry chefs means I eat very well all weekend. Is it either desolation or wilderness if there's pizza? Don't know, don't care, nom, nom, nom.