Two Worlds, Part II
…I snap into my “pulk-sled”—a basic sledding sled rigged with all manner of ropes and steel loops and clips and PVC tubing that will theoretically allow me to pull it along behind without interfering with my skis or poles or running into me on downhill sections. I went with a DIY, Youtube version rather than purchase an expensive, official setup, but as I try to get the thing secured to my hips, it seems as if either something is missing or I’ve forgotten how to put it all together. The sun is sinking fast, the wind picking up, lifting fresh snow into small snow-devils all along the shore, and fingers and toes are starting to go numb, so I jimmy-rig some extra cord into a kind of belt secured with a half-hitch, and I’m on my way.
The snowmobile trail has not been groomed in awhile, which makes for delightful skiing, the fresh snow providing plenty of grab, the tracks of the snowmobiles barely noticeable beneath it. At its worst, skiing on a snowmobile trail can be jarring, unpredictable, the hard-packed snow of the big groomers combined with the ridges and channels of the snowmobiles making cross-country skiing an awkward, ungainly kind of dance.
Soon only the enormous quiet of the woods, the shush-shush of my skis surround me. I’m tempted to take out my camera and photograph everything—the light coming through the near-shore spruces, the yellow birches with their twisted bases that often seem like legs when they grow around rocks, tree roots. The whole of the forest rests beneath the muting cover of snow but for a few places where the spring thaw has just begun, the mud and leaves and trickling water hard at work pushing winter aside again.
It’s only 3.5 miles to the cabin, but the sled is heavy with supplies—a few gallons of water, food, camera gear, and getting the sled around the occasional seepage proves to be quite a challenge. I don’t want to unclip, carry the sled, my skis over them, so I bushwhack up into the woods to find a place I can ski across and several times end up falling hard, skis, PVC, nylon cord tangling around me, so ultimately I have to remove everything to free myself from the sled hardware before I am on my way again….
I am thrilled finally to come down the final narrow trail to the cabin, to see it there intact, huddled under several feet of snow, the door not ripped off by a hungry bear, which a neighbor tells me has happened to them in the past, the shed not collapsed under the burden of snow. It takes some time to chip away at the hard-crust snow pushed against the door, but then I am inside where it feels colder still, the walls holding a winter’s worth of cold. Outside the sun has just slipped beneath the horizon, the sky a pinkish glow, the silence soothing now that I have arrived safely, will soon be dry and warm.
It always takes longer than I would like for the cabin to warm, even with a fire roaring in the wood stove, the stubborn cold seeming immutable. Outside the temperature quickly falls into the teens. The 60-degree spring seems even more distant now, the world of the lake, my cabin, an even more jarring contrast. When I’m sitting on the couch, huddled close to the stove, my view of the frozen white expanse of the lake is blocked by 3 or so feet of snow on the deck. I have stripped out of my sweaty clothes, found dry things in a dresser drawer, an odd medley of clothes left behind—old cotton sweatpants, a worn t-shirt, a rust-orange wool sweater.
Finally I feel settled, several armfuls of wood brought in, the gas stove boiling water for pasta, a very cold beer poured into a very cold glass, outside the total darkness of an Adirondack night, the Milky Way stretching over it all. I eat, melt snow for tea and dishes on the wood stove, settle into the solitude, into myself, content, warm now and dry and safe and tired and full, happy to have once again reduced my life to its basic, elemental necessities, to be alone here in this world, close, yet still far removed from the one I will return to all too soon.
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