Relative Something

This post is the second in a 3-part series describing my adventures as a 16-year-old, in 1976, spending a week in northern Minnesota, with five other classmates, learning winter survival skills from, Will Steger, in the years before he gained notoriety as a polar explorer. Four of us had just arrived at the spot where we were to leave modern conveniences behind, to immerse ourselves in a crash course of self-sufficiency, and winter survival skills…

We were just far enough out of downtown Ely, MN, to feel like we were completely in the wild. After parking the car and pondering whether we were even in the right place, we summoned the depths of our adolescent bravado for what lie ahead. As we were joking about ever seeing our loved ones again, …the best possible start for our week of adventure occurred: it began to snow. Great big flakes filled the sky and clouded the horizon.

Click image for Will’s description of his homestead

Not long after that, out in the middle of the frozen lake, a dark spot materialized. As it grew in size and definition, we deduced it to be our greeting party, Will Steger and a team of sled dogs. There was no road to his homestead. We would travel across two lakes, by sled.

During the ensuing week we would learn many things that I’ve since used over and over in my life. It was my first experience on cross-country skis. We snowshoed. We commanded a dogsled team. We built an igloo out of packed snow. We learned how to dress properly for the conditions, and to control our body temperature during a variety of levels of activity. We practiced orienteering. We learned to identify trees, and how to take advantage of their resources. We practiced starting one-match fires.

Paul G., Bill D., Will Steger, me

We were able to experience self-sufficient existence in a rustic setting. I remember the six of us thinking that he might be taking advantage of us, when he “allowed” us to experience what a day of chores would be like, collecting, splitting, and stacking wood for heating and cooking, hauling water, and preparing meals. It seemed like he was double-dipping, getting paid by us, and then putting us to work for him. Enduring a full day of that kind of real effort can be a brutal experience for a teenager, but it was a really good lesson for us to learn.

Some nights, we spread out our sleeping bags on the floor of his cabin, arranged around the pot-belly stove. Other nights, we slept in the igloo, or distributed among the hills of the nearby woods, under the stars. In the middle of the week, we took a sauna, and jumped through a hole cut in the ice of the lake.

On the day he was teaching us orienteering, we were on snowshoes. With map and compass, we plotted a course and traversed a lot of woods, tromping through plenty of snow. As the afternoon grew long, he reported that it was time for him to hustle back and get dinner started. It would be our test to navigate the way home on our own. The thing I remember about this moment is how effortlessly he departed on those snowshoes. He put his arms behind his back, clasped hands like a casual skater, and seemed to just glide across the snow, far from the typical trudging one might expect with snowshoes.

Speaking of dinner, the food was truly memorable. It may have simply been the setting, or the extreme effort we were putting in every day, but it all just tasted so good, and had a rustic wholesomeness. Well, this, coming from a teenager living in the suburbs, who ate an awful lot of processed, and fast-served food. One of the ingredients he used as accent was sunflower nuts. I’d never had them in beef stew before and they turned out to be a treat. He used them in everything it seemed, and they really did provide something special. Until day seven…

Continues tomorrow with the final installment of this story…