And Then It Snowed

      When I woke up to a couple of inches of snow at my house on Monday, I immediately offered to lead a Grants Pass Nordic Club ski trip to Summit Sno-Park in the Cascades between Medford and Klamath Falls. At first it looked like no one was interested, but I was going to go, solo or accompanied, because I needed to ski. I hadn't skied since the first of the year, and I needed to know I was ready for a week of cross-country skiing, classic style, in Alaska next week.

    At the last minute, three other people joined me: Jesse, who has skied with the Club for many years; Monika, who is a hot-shot athlete and does a lot of downhill as well as backcountry skiing; and Monika's mother, Elsa, who is 82 years old and grew up on cross-country skis in Norway.

Monika, Elsa and me

    The snow doesn't come any smoother and more perfect than it was on Tuesday. Our skis slid along the trail with perfect ease.

I am in front, Jesse behind me

We skied a long way up the road, then turned into the forest and skied through the big firs to the shelter built by the Rogue Group Sierra Club, Grants Pass Nordic Club, and Southern Oregon Nordic Club in the 1960s, a good place to sit down and have a bite to eat—and a sip of the firewater Elsa had brought to share.

Jesse in front of the shelter

    We took a different trail on the way back to the sno-park, down the mountain through the trees, down hills with smooth loop-de-loops and up hills that required step-climbing.

Elsa skiing through the trees

We were following blue diamond signs tacked to trees to stay on the trail. At one point, the blue diamond had an arrow pointing to the left, so we turned there, alongside a tree plantation. I don't have a good sense of direction, but I didn't remember skiing past a tree plantation at Summit before. Monika said, "This doesn't feel right. This is entirely the wrong direction." So we turned back to the blue diamond with the arrow, which Elsa looked at more closely and discovered, as she had suspected, that the bottom of the sign had come unnailed and the wind had turned the arrow the wrong direction. Back on the trail, we skied easily and smoothly back to the car.

    Monika figured we had skied six and a half miles. I will have to ski nine miles the first day in Alaska. Did I feel like I could ski another two and a half miles? Well, yes, I thought I could do that. I would be tired, but I could do it. Monika pointed out that I had done those six and a half miles climbing hills up and down and that the classic cross-country skiing I'll be doing in Alaska will be flatter. Maybe six and a half miles in the Oregon backcountry equals nine miles skiing in tracks on flatter terrain. 

    I was going to ski again today, but I think I'm ready enough. Instead, I've spent a leisurely day packing my gear. I hope the snow in Alaska on Sunday, our first day of skiing, is as good as it was last Tuesday. When the snow is good in Oregon, the skiing couldn't be any better. The Alaska Range is sure to be spectacular, but the Oregon mountains are pretty beautiful in the snow, too.

Brown Mountain from our trail

Is It Spring Already?

    In his poem, "The Peace of Wild Things," Wendell Berry talks about getting out of bed when "despair of the world" prevents sleep. He goes and lies down in the grass by a pond and lets the peace of wild things, "who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief," flow into him. He rests, he says, "in the grace of the world" and is free.

    I like to lie in the peace of wild things, too, but lately their peaceful lack of worry about the future weighs heavily on me. I feel not free but burdened with responsibility. Wendell's poem was published in 2012. Certainly we were aware of climate change then, but in the last decade my grief for the future has grown exponentially. 

     Last Saturday, hiking up the Little Grayback trail, I saw two shooting stars in bloom and a manzanita bush in full flower. Today as I walked up the mountain I live on, I saw pedicularis (elephant's trunks) already emerging. And birds are singing in the trees again. I have been seeing robins all winter. 

    Usually I rejoice at the signs of spring, but they bring little peace and pleasure to me now because it shouldn't be spring already. It's only the middle of February, for God's sake. Usually if signs of spring appear too early, I'm worried about a late frost. "No, no! Too early!" I tell the flowers and fruit trees. "It'll get cold again. Go back. Go back."

    But now I'm not worried about a late frost. I'm worried because it's all out of whack. Shooting stars should not be coming out in February. Birds should not be returning in February. Manzanitas always bloom early, but not this early. Spring in the middle of February? We haven't had winter yet. 

    Most of all, if it's so warm that the wildflowers are already out, what is going to happen to us in July? The snow that fell in southern Oregon in late December has miraculously stayed at the highest elevations, but, as my friend Janeen points out, usually the mid-elevation peaks would also have snow. This year they are bare. Temperatures in the 100s, drought, wildfire—how early, I wonder, will those summer plagues appear this year and how often?

    Not long ago scientists were predicting that the warming trends would be disastrously irreversible in however many decades, adding that it would probably happen even faster than they were predicting. But now even I feel the avalanche effect of climate change. It is here and now and it affects and will affect us all. If you don't have the wildfires of the west, you have tornadoes in the midwest, hurricanes on the east coast, floods anywhere, all with more ferocity than ever. California is seeing the worst drought in 1200 years. Florida is already beginning to drown. Island nations are losing land. The tundra is thawing. Even if you don't see climate change phenomena where you live (but you will), you will certainly feel the effects of all the people seeking new places to live as their homes become uninhabitable. 

    Thomas Berry (no kin to Wendell), says, "The human is that being in whom the universe comes to itself in a special mode of conscious reflection." We have failed our responsibility of being that consciousness. I want to go around apologizing, to the wild things who in their individual beings bring us peace, for what we have done to their world as well as our own.

 

Cross-country Skiing in Alaska

    Looking through the Sierra Club catalog of national and international trips last fall, in my usual "if-only" daydreaming, I read about a cross-country ski trip in Alaska, billed as "in the shadow of Denali." 

    It sounded enchanting: Ski nine miles to the Denali View Chalet, "a true wilderness lodge," the web site says, with "rustic and remote Alaska charm," no road access, forty miles south of Denali. The Sierra Club group—twelve in all—would stay at the lodge for a week, skiing every day on a multitude of trails. The aurora borealis would be visible. There would be snow! The food, I was told, was to rave about, and there was a sauna down by the lake. The day after we returned to Anchorage would be the first day of the Iditarod, so we would be able to see that, too. 

    If only. 

    But why not? 

    I signed up.

    I was excited for months. In early winter I started preparing.

    Because my feet for years have slid around inside my ski boots, I thought I would ski better if I could find better-fitting boots, so I went looking. But there were no boots my size in the whole Rogue Valley and none even at REI nationwide. (It's a supply chain problem.) Finally, though, boots arrived, and I tried on a size 38 (too small) and a size 39 (too big). Okay, fine. I've been skiing with my current boots for years. They'll do.

    The trip information sheet said to check with the trip leader if we wanted to bring our own skis, so I sent her the specs for my skis and asked if I could use them. She said I could. 

    Then I watched an REI seminar on cross-country skiing and found out that the skiing I love is called backcountry skiing. (I had thought I didn't do backcountry because I don't use skins.) Cross-country skiing is skiing in set tracks over groomed trails. That's not the skiing I do.

    Then the trip leader injured her leg and had to quit the trip. The new trip leader told me there was no way I could use my own skis because we would be cross-country, not backcountry, skiing, in tracks. My skis were too wide for the tracks. They would get stuck in the snow. 

    I was dismayed. I don't even like skiing in tracks. I like skiing through the woods, figuring out how to manage obstacles, snowplowing down steep hills. Can you even snowplow in tracks?

    Now I was panicked because I would have to rent cross-country skis, boots, and poles, and my feet are so hard to fit! What would I do if I got to the rental shop in Anchorage and the boots didn't fit? To minimize the possibility, I tried on boots for classic cross-country (not backcountry) skis at a local ski rental shop. Size 38 was definitely too small. Size 39 would do. It would have to do. I would take lots of moleskin.

    I made a reservation at REI in Anchorage to rent cross-country (not backcountry) skis, boots, and poles and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I wouldn't have to sit in the lodge while everyone else went out on the trails, after all. I would be skiing, too. And who knows? Maybe I'll like cross-country skiing.

    My excitement has returned. I'll be in the snow. I'll be skiing, and it'll be a new adventure. I'll see the aurora borealis. I'll eat the good food of the Denali View Chalet. I'll sweat in the sauna by the lake, then roll, steaming, in the snow. I'll ski under the massive peaks of the Alaska Range—Denali, Foraker, Hunter. Oh, doesn't it sound fantastic! I can't wait.