Twelve days in the Brooks Range, part four

The floor is flowers

First! I recently opened applications for my February Arizona Beginners Backpacking Trips- go from zero outdoors experience to knowing enough to plan your own backpacking trips! Plus eat KK’s incredible cooking. I imagine that these will sell out. Deets and the application are here, plus read reviews from past participants.

Also! Do you want to become confident with using caltopo for cross country navigation? And wander about in canyons in the beautiful southern Utah desert? There are still a few spots in my fall Utah trips, which are honestly a peak experience. Deets and the application are here.

Part one of this series is here, part two is here, part three is here.

Day 9, 10, 11

June 22, 23, 24

An endless series of small, steep, mossy passes and soft snowfields, and river cobbles, the flowers brighter and the mosquitos more present each day. I’m hungry and I have just enough food. Rain comes only briefly, warmly, with thunder. My soul exalts on the ridges. This is what we were made for- to look out at the world, to wonder which passes go. To walk uphill until we’re hungry and exhausted. To sleep for twelve hours straight.

The floor is upholstery. Bear #11 is brown, not blonde. Is arctic summer still short, if you count all 24 hours of daylight? What is a flower’s experience of time? Why bisect each 24 hours into day and night? Why not one long night and one long day? I’ve never experienced polar night. Would I go insane? Possibly.

We lay in the flowers for hours. There’s caribou trails everywhere we want to go. I start to feel stronger but maybe my pack is just getting lighter. (Shoutout to Superior Wilderness Designs, whose 50 liter Long Haul pack I brought on this trip, and SJ brought one too- they’re perfect!)

We reach our pickup spot in the early afternoon on day 11. To pass the time, we try to start a fire on the gravel bar. We have lighters, grass, small willow twigs, larger willow twigs. Why is it so hard? I finally get one going, and have the satisfaction of burning my wipes. While hunting for kindling I flush a ptarmigan and find her nest, with seven perfect mottled eggs. I joke that if we don’t get picked up, at least we can eat ptarmigan eggs?

Day 12

June 25

Our pilot will pick us up midday. No, in the afternoon. Ok, by 5pm for sure. I have just one bar and a few spoonfuls of olive oil left. SH was smart and actually has food leftover, which she shares with us- almonds, licorice, mentos, nerds gummy clusters. I hadn’t had nerds gummy clusters before this trip and didn’t know what the hype was, but now I get it completely. It’s like eating one of those videos where they shave a bar of soap and then fashion the shavings into a rose and then crunch the rose up with their hand, if you know what I mean. SJ has an extra freeze-dried meal, garam masala, which she prepares and then passes around. We talk excitedly about moose spaghetti- SJ brought canned moose and pasta sauce in her suitcase, and I brought GF spaghetti in mine. We have an air bnb booked tonight in Kotzebue and we can make the spaghetti there. I can’t imagine a more exciting meal than that.

I spend the day in my shelter because the mosquitoes are kind of annoying, finishing my fourteen-hour Lian Moriarty audiobook and dozing, naked in the shade of my sleeping bag, which is draped over the tent. The aquaseal peeled off my neo-air, since the hole wasn’t in a flat spot, but SH also had some waterproof tape, and that at least slowed the leak down. I only have to re-inflate the pad every few hours. Finally we hear the drone of a small engine and we rush to pack our things away, all except SH who will stay, joined by Luc and Will who are on the plane, and they will packraft to the Arctic Ocean. Luc did promise to bring SH a pizza, so at least there is that.

On the plane ride we look down at the land, which has gone from brown and barren to a riot of green in the time we’ve been out. Our pilot has been in Kotzebue for more than thirty years.

“Used to be,” he says, “people would ask me what time of year was best to do things, when there would be snow, or bugs, or when it would freeze, and I could tell them. Now I just say, I don’t know.”

Kotzebue vibes

In Kotzebue it’s windy and bright and we’re too hungry to cook so we walk to one of the two restaurants, both of which serve Chinese food and burgers. I get a salad with my broccoli beef and it’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever tasted. Have you ever had purple cabbage, shredded thinly, with iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing? Oh my god. Afterwards we walk along the sea, watch the wind whip it into a frenzy. Siberia is not far away. Borders are imaginary. These Iñupiaq and the ones just across the water used to be the same people, now they are separated by so many constructs… little kids dart around on BMX bikes, and there’s an apartment balcony with caribou hides draped over the railing, right next to a starlink dish.

Our Airbnb host, Lori, is extremely nice, and has a beautiful house in which she rents out two of the rooms. There’s a yorkie that barks angrily at us, making me miss my dogs.

I stay up too late going through my email and then wake at 6 a.m. and creep out of the room, so as not to wake SJ. I make a cup of coffee. God, coffee is incredible! When SJ wakes we decide to make the moose spaghetti for breakfast and it hits the spot so hard I almost weep. Getting hungry and then eating. Is there anything better in this life!

A series of flights ferry me across this huge land towards home. Alaska should really be its own country. Or several countries? Tonight I will see my dogs, and my boyfriend. I hear there were forest fires while I was gone, but then it rained and everything was ok. A little fire is normal in Alaska in summer, the boreal forest can burn a bit each year, as a treat. But how much fire is too much fire? Someone probably knows. In five days I’ll go back to the arctic for a week, with my first guided trip. Although I feel like I just got a full years’ worth of sunlight, I hope we get some too.

Postscript! A friend read my last newsletter and discovered that what we thought was the skull of a young bear was in fact a juvenile wolf! (Thanks Kari!) Now I really want to know what happened…

Thanks for reading,

Carrot