A Week in the Woods: the Idea

I have vague memories of a childhood in a village in rural Nigeria. I remember playing in the rain outside our cement-block house, and I remember watching our neighbors thatch one of their huts. I remember the red hill sparkling with crystals at the end of the road, and the coolness of the mango grove near the well. Ever since my family left the village, I've spent most of my time in cities, and while that has certainly has its perks, I miss the sort of wilderness that I was fortunate enough to inhabit at a young age.

Last summer, when I had the opportunity to do research in the Yukon for a few months, the chance to live in the wilderness was a big pull. The camp we worked from was a gathering of wooden shacks in the middle of a forested valley backed by a line of stony hills that would have been more picturesque if they hadn't had to compare with the range of snow-capped mountains on the other side of the vale. It was certainly a different sort of wilderness than I had previously encountered, but it was great nonetheless. We worked six days a week, but even then we found time for hiking in the hills, foraging in the forest, and swimming in several of the extremely cold local lakes. It helped that the sun only set for a couple hours each night.

For me, the culmination of this wilderness experience happened in my final week in the Yukon. Each research technician was entitled to a one-week holiday, the only condition being that they weren't allowed to stay in camp (perhaps it would lower the morale of those still working). Some techs used their week for roadtrips, to see the rest of the territory and maybe Alaska too. Some techs flew back to their hometowns for a week back in civilization. For most of the summer, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Backpacking along a trail in a nearby national park sounded appealing, but I didn't have a good tent to use. The idea occurred to me to take a tarp instead of a tent and just build a shelter for myself each night along the trail. After all, I've always enjoyed the idea of building shelters from natural materials. Upon more reflection, however, it sounded like a lot of work to walk all day and then spend a few hours gathering branches and tying them together before I could sleep.

Finally, the solution struck me: instead of backpacking down a trail (which is a sort of curated wilderness in many cases), I could have the experience I wanted by walking into the woods with a week's worth of supplies and building a shelter to keep my bones warm and dry while I spent the days doing whatever I liked. It would be just me, nature, and a bunch of gear because I'm not an experienced survivalist by any means. As I pitched this idea to my coworkers, logistical issues were raised and safety concerns were voiced (it was bear season, after all), but ultimately I got the impression that this was the first time in the camp's memory that such a vacation had been attempted, and, being scientists, everyone was interested to see how it would play out.