Gates of the Arctic II (a.k.a. place-experiencing)

[T]o [a human being] just back from the source streams of the Koyukuk, no comfort, no security, no invention, no brilliant thought which the modern world had to offer could provide half the elation of the days spent in the little-explored, uninhabited world of the arctic wilderness -- Bob Marshall, Alaska Wilderness

(The following are excerpts from my field notebook / raw data from my grand experiment to experience Marshall's "Alaska Wilderness", now protected as Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve)

Oolah Pass, just before the storm breaks

Evening, Day 2, in the middle of an early-July hailstorm, hoping the tent will hold
How am I ever going to be able to lug this pack for ten more days, over more passes and through more rivers?
Good god, the rivers.
I'll never make it [on a solo traverse of part of the Brooks Range, from the Dalton Highway to the village of Anaktuvuk Pass]. Bigger, harder than I remembered or expected, how could I have ever thought this possible, much less necessary?
Why am I doing this?

[An hour later, the sun came out. I emerged from the tent for a hasty dinner between storms. Freezing cold, but fierce, beautiful, blazing.]

****

Afternoon, Day 3, having just (barely) made it across the turbid blue-grey rapids of the rain- and snowmelt-swollen Itkillik River, then crawled out onto the bank and sobbed until my heart stopped fluttering and stomach unknotted
I do NOT want to be here, do NOT want to be doing this, what on earth do I think I'm doing? Why?

[An hour later, curled up under my poncho to wait out another bout of rain and watch as the rest of the valley disappeared then reappeared under a glorious full rainbow, unexpectedly, the sky broke open to a pure Arctic blue.]

****

Midday, Day 5, having fallen in a creek, slipped again on wet mossy rocks, begun to shiver uncontrollably in the pouring rain, pitched the tent early and crawled into my sleeping bag for what would be a very long tent-bound afternoon / night, time punctuated only by the echoing crash of ice and rock falling off the cliffs on the other side of the valley

Nearly 24 hours feeling cold, lonely, and afraid in a tent at the headwaters of the North Fork of the Koyukuk. But pure wildness.

What am I doing here? What brought me here? What had I hoped to find? And why is so much beauty, so much wildness only making me feel cold, tired, in pain? Where's the wonder, the joy, the sublime?
Nothing but dread for tomorrow (good god, Peregrine Pass), and the next day, and the next.
How I wish I had a warmer hat. A dry suit. A GPS. How I wish I wasn't here, that I hadn't come. I wish life had worked out so I wouldn't have felt whatever it was that made me think I needed to come.
How I wish it would stop raining.

[The next morning: woke to ice on the tent and a glorious fog-bow.]

****

Evening, Day 6, while eating dinner under a sky rippling and roiling with clouds
What am I doing out here, so far and so alone?

Asperitas. NOT the clouds you want to see on day 6 of an 11 day wilderness trip, dozens of mountain-toothed, river-laced, and bog-riddled miles from any semblance of civilization.  But breathtaking.

****

Midday, Day 7, during a luxuriously long tundra nap
To be honest, I don't even care.
I'm sure it's beautiful—the photographs will attest to that, belatedly—but right now, I have neither the energy nor the inclination to appreciate it. In fact, except when I stop to unstrap my ungodly heavy pack and collapse down to rest, sprawling across the tundra, I can’t look up and drink in the scenery -- the soaring mountains, the sweeping valleys, the churning layers of sky. All of my attention has to be on the ground. Step by every single step, I have to focus on my feet, never sure whether I’ll sink knee-deep in wet moss, tilt sideways off a tussock of grass, slip into an icy-cold stream, or jiggle a rock in just the wrong way and send a whole mountainside of scree tumbling down the precipitous slope I'm gingerly trying to traverse. 

And yet, lying here, nestled into the soft (lumpy, wet) mosses and sedges, mosquitoes feebly failing to get through the headnet, sun weakly trying to shine, well: This is bliss.

Ernie Pass. I could have stayed here forever

****

Evening, Day 9, sitting on a hillside eating dinner as moose go browsing by and a rainbow arcs off to the east, a worthwhile end to an otherwise miserable day

Nearly got swept away by what was supposed to be an unnamed side drainage--an opaque brown mass at least a foot higher than usual, judging from how it swallowed shrubs and branches along the shore.
Should have waited. Shouldn't have crossed where I did--just one wide channel, thigh-deep, no respite. Legs weak, weaker, right calf popped halfway across. I had to stop, lean in, pray that the rocks wouldn't shift under my feet and that I'd still be able to walk. Inch by inch, numb with cold and absolute fear by the time the water shallowed to knee-deep. Just when I thought it was over, proceeded to slip on the mud-coated bank, fall in the river, soaked.
Tomorrow: another drainage, with an even larger watershed than this one. I'm really not sure I can make it. But I have to. I don't have any idea why I came here, but since I did, I now have to keep going, somehow.

Won't it ever stop raining? Mist ever stop swirling? What happened to Marshall's promise of mountains that are sharp and absolute?

****

Afternoon, Day 10, having summoned all of my willpower and then some to pack up and march toward the drainage, against absolute dread
Miserable, cold, wet, far edge of exhausted. But across.
Rain, mosquitoes, bogs. Freeing, to not care about wet feet any more.

****

Morning, Day 11, still in tent. Crying, if only to keep warm
Really, world? Really?
Fog. All fog. Can't see a thing. No idea which way to go. Map and compass are useless when the world is invisible. Yet again, what was I thinking, to refuse to bring a GPS? Idiotic wilderness purist idealism. Amaze me, wilderness!, I ask; I came to you alone, over-laden yet under-equipped. Humbled, open. Yet I demand, Give me hope, meaning, joy!
In reply, fog.

Stumbling blindly through nothingness for several hours, navigating by the sound of airplane engines echoing out from Anaktuvuk Pass, my dubious sense of direction, and a mix of stubbornness, desperation, and raw hope. Apparently, that's all I needed.