A Week in the Woods: Day Six

Day six was hard to distinguish from my other days in the woods. The rain from the previous night continued on and off, but my shelter stayed dry and I stayed warm. My reading went on at a rapid pace; I finished Robinson Crusoe and was left with whatever I could find of interest on my Kindle. Trips to the stream for water were a polished routine at this point, as were meals of peanut butter, granola, and fruit on my kitchen hill.

In the evening, I was visited again by a representative from Squirrel Camp, and we decided to do a bit of exploring-- after all, there is safety in numbers. When we had gone along the nearby trail for a bit and taken a few turns, we were surprised to see a clearing full of rusted cans. Other scraps of metal and wooden planks were scattered around, as well as a few glass bottles and other old 20th century objects. There were even a few 55-gallon drums lying around, just as rusted as everything else.

Our best guess for the origin of the can graveyard was some early road-building activities undertaken by the US army when the modern Alaska highway hadn't yet been completed. It was strange to see such a heap of human activity in the middle of nowhere, but it was a good reminder that while it's possible to go places where human's aren't very often, there's not too many places (on land, at least) that humans have never been. Following this line of thought can be useful when thinking about conservation and the role of humans in nature, but that's another blog post.

After poking at the abandoned cans for a bit, we headed back to my camp and tried to make another campfire, but it started drizzling again so we just sat beneath a well-leafed tree, nature's umbrella. The clearing was really starting to feel like home.

A Week in the Woods: Day Five

Nights in the Yukon were fairly cold. Even in the peak of summer temperatures frequently dropped below zero, and by mid-August when I spent my week in the woods, the first chills of autumn were already being felt. As a result, my sleeping bag alone was not enough and I wore all my clothes to bed, five layers all told. This had been alright for the first few days, but on the morning of day five I woke up with my feet hurting from the cold, even with two pairs of my thickest socks on. It was an unpleasantly new feeling, but I suppose it was better than them being completely numb. For the first time, I considered returning to the relative warmth of Squirrel Camp, at least to get extra blankets or something. I would like to think that I wasn't too proud for such an option, but I ultimately decided to try wearing my boots to bed instead. This ended up working well; it was perhaps not the cleanest option for my sleeping bag, but was tolerably warm at least for the rest of my nights in the woods.

Once my feet were safe, I had another slow morning. It was Sunday, so I sang a few hymns and read from my Bible with the spirituality evoked by being in nature and the formality gathered by the habit of doing that sort of thing on Sundays. In the afternoon, I went on another exploratory walk through the forest, but the increasingly cloudy skies combined with the general unease of being away from my shelter drove me back after half an hour or so.

As evening began, it started to rain-- not too hard, but enough to be the first real test of how waterproof my shelter was. I retreated inside with my books and was pleased to find that I stayed dry and, in my sleeping bag boots and all, relatively toasty. Wanting to stay dry while it rains isn't a uniquely human urge, but being under a roof and hearing the rain outside did give me a feeling of primal satisfaction.

I read in bed until I was tired, then I snuggled in for another night of spruce-smelling sleep.