Wherein a Snowshoeing Maniac and a Total Rookie Winter Camp at Tahquamenon Hills
(Darn, I don’t have this author’s name! He’s from East Lansing, Mich., though. It’s somewhere, but I’m moving too fast to go get it at this point.)
Forty-six degrees below zero! New 1 Year’s Eve huddled in a snowbank at 46 below! The wind howled out of the darkness and exploded through the pines. The snow burst from the branches overhead, pummeling my head and shoulders.
I edged so close to our small fire I could taste the embers. Smoke swirled about us, and I drank in the warmth.
Armchair adventurers take heed! I too like sitting at home in warm slippers, sipping hot tea. I have no desire to hike the Himalayas the hard way, no urge to climb Mount McKinley barefoot.
Curse Banjo Eli! Curse his siren’s song conjured with guile and cunning-“No crowds! No black flies, no mosquitoes! Winter peace and calm. Forests blanketed in a silent, white beauty.”
Dangling the Timberlost quadrangle before my eyes, Banjo stroked his black beard. “By map it’s 10 miles west of Paradise and 400 miles north of Hell. A wild land-muskeg and cedar swamps-stunted black spruce to climax forests of beech and hemlock. A pristine land of fox and weasel, black bear and marten-one million roadless acres!”
I piloted the car while Banjo painted Tahquamenon images. From the capsule of steel and glass, from warmth and comfort, it was magic. Paper birch, cedar, and black spruce stood ornamented in ice and snow. Rocketing north, the flatlands fell away. Midway up Michigan’s mitten we entered another world.
Paradise, Michigan, faces east onto Whitefish Bay. Lake Superior calms here, but the power of the great lake is inescapable. Snowfall is measured in feet, not inches–25 feet or more each year. Snowshoes are not just an aid, they are a necessity. Without them, we sink to our waists.
“Just two seasons up here,” the store clerk in Paradise joked, “winter and the Fourth of July.”
My pack bulged with storm gear, extra clothes, and winter rations. Banjo hoisted it for me and loaded in onto my back. Ugh.
The Tahquamenon hills are not high by western standards, but they are steep and scarped. Our trail plunged one moment, only to crawl upward on twists and turns.
“Wool!” Banjo had recommended, “wool on wool over wool.” Because wool retains its insulating qualities when wet.
I bent into the wind, and soon sweat ran down my forehead. Sweating into the wool, I occasionally caught a whiff of myself, strong and unforgettable, like the aroma of a pack of wild, wet dogs.
Banjo Eli broke trail. I trudged behind, the hours seeming like days. Dark clouds appeared to be a gray ceiling of lead, pressing down and adding to my load.
Wind whipped the snow with frenzy. Each step brought fresh snow down my neck. Even the animals were absent. Not even a single bird. It created a hostile, foreboding feeling.
Banjo swung around “Why do we do this?” he asked, and swept his hand
about, as though addressing the trees. “Think of Nepal. Patagonia! Exciting, exotic. Why go to Nepal, hire a guide, and spend thousands of dollars? You’re doing the same thing right here! A blizzard, snow, and cold are the same everywhere.”
I leaned into the howling wind, shifting the pack to let the straps gouge a different part of my shoulders. My voice rose, “This may be a bargain-basement blizzard, the greatest blue-light blizzard in all of history, but I don’t see the logic!”
Banjo just smiled his far away smile. I sighed and said, “Let me at least get a picture. I want proof, actual proof, that I did this.”
Suddenly, I realized that the photos would fail too. How could they capture the cold, the howl of the wind? Photos would be flat, white upon white, unable to catch the essence.
From the road the snow had looked so peaceful. But hunching into the westerly wind, my face stinging from the bite of ice, amidst the swirling snow, I could only ask, “Why?”
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit,” Banjo said.
“Oh, sure!”
“It’s Virgil,” Banjo said. “It means, ‘And perhaps some day the memory of this will aid us.”
A howl of wind. a white swirl, and a snow devil formed between us. I watched the whirl of snow a moment. then I trudged onward. I marched, hitting a cadence, disassociating my mind.
For thousands of years men have sought the wilderness for visions. Trudging, marching along, I began to understand. My consciousness moved beyond my body.
Then came a vision. Pizza! Warm room. hot pizza, and cold beer. ‘ Maybe pizza is the meaning of life:’ I mumbled.
By 4 it was already growing dark. We tromped out an area for the tent. another for the fire. then cut firewood. stacked it. and built a fire platform. Without the platform the fire would melt the snow beneath and sink slowly out of sight. At 5 p.m. it was dark.
I stood by the fire. squatted a while, then stood again.
“Pick a snowdrift:’ Banjo said. “Shovel out a chair:’ Banjo kicked a hole into a snowbank near the fire. He lay his sleepingbag pad into the depression. Reclining back, he smiled, looking cozy and snug.
I pressed out a seat next to Banjo and put my pad down. It was amazingly comfortable. I stared at the fire. Darkness enveloped us. Not a star shone in the sky. Our small fire darkened the night and built a black wall around our camp.
I stood and played with the logs. “Banjo, nature calls. Let me have the toilet paper.”
He looked at me a moment, thinking.
“You didn’t forget it?” I tried not to let my voice sound frantic.
“No, but I forgot to tell you something.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “You know the ground is frozen, right? In winter there’s no way to bury the toilet paper. Come spring, there would be soiled toilet paper strewn all over the place. Use snow.”
“What!”
I glared at Banjo, then stared off at the wind whipping ice and snow about. My face must have looked pathetic. Banjo dug into his pack and pulled out a small roll of toilet paper. “I was saving this in case it really got cold. Just burn what you use.”
We slept 11 hours that first night. For two more days we fought for every step, battling snow, cold, and blizzard. Time blurred. Two days lost in a white blur.
On the third morning I woke stiff and sore, still in the same position I’d fallen asleep in. Just Banjo’s eyes, nose, and beard protruded from his sleeping bag. His black beard, spilling from his yellow balaclava, looked like the horsehair stuffing busting from an old chair.
There were stiff kinks to work out of muscles as I tended a small morning fire. I chewed dried apples and sipped hot tea as the sun rose, the first direct sunlight in three days. I stared in amazement at the sunlight glinting on the snow. Like a gift of sight given to a blind man, I stood in awe. Never had I seen with such laser sharpness.
[nonexistant photo caption:
In the early afternoon we mounted a ridge, passing through balsam firs and brushing them. Their fragrance caressed us. Seven hundred feet below lay the serpentine folds of the Tahquamenon River. Its water etched in black against the snow.]
Most of the morning we hiked through mixed stands of stunted black spruce, jack pines, and aspen. Wintergreen and kinickinick showed through where the snow was windblown thin. Wintergreen leaves chewed with snow renewed us as we marched.
In the early afternoon we mounted a ridge, passing through balsam firs and brushing them. Their fragrance caressed us. White pines towered over the ridge line. Their delicate, feathery foliage sparkled in the sunlight. As I struggled to the top, a stiff wind slapped my face.
Pure joy washed over me, electric and alive. Seven hundred feet below lay the serpentine folds of the Tahquamenon River, its water etched in black against the snow. Dark brown like tea, it is steeped in the cedar swamps and hemlock forests of its birth. The thin, sandy soil is too porous to hold the tannins and resinous acids.
We camped on the ridge, held by the magic. Dusk came too soon, sneaking on us like a bandit. The temperature plummeted. Wind howled as it whipped over the ridgeline.
“Slumgullion!” Banjo announced, “Dinner’s served.” The first course was salty, split-pea soup. Slumgullion, a watery chicken stew, was next, followed by pints of hot tea. No feast ever tasted better.
“Why do all your meals have strange names, like slumgullion and rubaboo?” I asked as I threw another log on the fire and filled the pot again with snow.
The wind gusted and swirled ash into the pot. When I poured out a pint, it was gray.
I dropped a tea bag into my mug and settled back into my snowdrift. Raising my mug in toast, “Cheers to the snowdrift lounge.”
A wall of white pines surrounded us, flickering in firelight. The snow blew up over the ridge and accumulated on top of us, but we sipped tea peacefully. I had my answer to the question, “Why?”
My soul was rekindled by catharsis, redirection, and reaffirmation. I would have gone to East Hell and back for one such moment.
The next day we snowshoed upstream, tracking the river. Leaving the white pines, heading into hemlock woods, we snowshoed into another white pine grove, then into beech forest. A hairy woodpecker searched the bark of a spruce for his dinner. A grouse lay so still and cryptic we nearly stepped on it. The tracks of a snowshoe hare dodged and twisted tortuously, evading a fox.
Our last night we pitched our tent in a clearing surrounded by young white pines. The trees became our clothesline. Red, blue, green, and yellow ripstop everywhere, as if dynamite had exploded our packs. The cloth shimmered from a light breeze, like beautiful, anarchistic art.
Sheltered in our cove, our fire spread its warmth. The sky opened to a ceiling of stars. We sipped our hot tea and gazed in wonder at the panorama of crystal lights.
Banjo raised his hand to the sky. “The stars, there are my diamonds!” He pointed to the fire. “There is all the gold I’ll ever need!”
He raised his mug of tea. “Happy New Year!”
The last day held an air of melancholy joy. The sun seemed brighter, the air crisper, the song of the birds sweeter. The morning was clear and frigid. Snow underfoot cracked like crushed cellophane. We hiked upstream, swiftly and wordlessly.
As we neared the falls, northern white cedar perfumed the air. Beech and hemlock towered over the river on undulating hills and rock outcroppings. The river crashed over the falls. Mist settled on the nearby bushes, freezing and sculpting them into lovely, lonely ice statues.
From the falls it was just a hike to the roadhead. The car lay buried under more than a foot of snow. The battery was stone dead. Suddenly I realized I was smiling. I grinned like a madman. Losing a snowshoe was something important; a dead battery was hardly an inconvenience.
I felt strong enough to push the car to town. Like Antaeus, I had grown stronger each day-the challenge of pushing back limits, learning resourcefulness, self-reliance.
Using our snowshoes as shovels, we dug out the car, then pushed it onto the road and raised the hood. I stood by the car holding jumper cables. Cars sped by.
Defiant, I finally stood in the middle of the road, forcing the next car to stop. The driver stepped out as his three passengers huddled in the car. Stoic, I connected the cables and jumped back in my car.
I glanced in the mirror and glimpsed a stranger scruffy and wild. Icicles hung from my beard. My eyes peered back with piercing power. Staring back at me from the mirror was the face of a wild prophet, one who lived in the wilderness of locusts and wild honey.
No wonder no one stopped, I thought as I jumped out of the car. I smiled. “Thanks a lot,” I said to the driver.
He was jumping up and down, trying to stay warm. “It’s only five degrees ‘ he said. “I’m not surprised it didn’t start.”
Banjo and I were not even wearing our jackets. Five degrees was almost tropical.
“I didn’t want to get up this morning,” the driver added.
I nodded knowingly. I didn’t want to get up either. I didn’t want to leave or to head back home.
The driver marched in place with his hands shoved under his armpits. “Yeah, I didn’t want to leave that motel room. Where did you guys stay?”
Banjo Eli pointed towards the river. “About four miles that way.”
Surprise mingled with disbelief crossed the driver’s face.
“Where?”
Banjo pointed again. “We were camping out. ‘
“It was 46° below last night!” The driver stared at us a moment, then trotted to his car and shouted in, “Get out here! You guys got to hear this. These guys were camping out last night!”
“Five days!” one of the passengers said. “Did anything exciting happen?”
I shook my head and gave a cryptic smile. “Not really. Just an ordinary winter trip.”
Friends have asked me about next New Year’s Eve. Well, I already have my reservations in. One million roadless acres. Two snowshoers. Half a million acres each.
It’s booked solid.
