Relative Something

This post is the last of 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. I left off yesterday in the middle of a description of the memorable meals we were treated to…

After a week of eating food with sunflower nuts mixed in, it began to be a bit much. By the last day, our cravings for the things we missed were really hitting us hard, especially sweets. It was something awful. Will wasn’t completely oblivious. He announced a special treat to celebrate our last breakfast: pancakes with real syrup. Sweet, sweet syrup. Boy were we drooling for this. Then, just at the moment that should have been the ultimate reward, our joy was crushed by nuts. He had put sunflower nuts in the pancakes! Auuugh!

Just prior to our arrival, a new litter of puppies had been born. On the night he sent us out for that ‘final’ test –the solo under-the-stars overnight– Will took advantage of his first free moment since we had arrived, and got out his parabolic microphone, to record the sound of those newborn puppies making all sorts of squeaky noises.

I don’t know if he had mischievous intentions when he started this project, or just proceeded out of an organic curiosity. When he played the first recording back, to hear how it sounded, it caused the other dogs to get a little excited, and they started making their own noise. So, he recorded their reaction, and then played that back. This brought about an increased response from all the dogs. He repeated the process. By the time he was done, those dogs sounded really agitated, and from my vantage point, alone, in the dark woods, I went through a lot of worst-case scenarios to explain what could have been causing all the fuss.

I remember how Will freaked out (and scared the heck out of us) when he found one of the girls had a little blood on her hand from something like a cuticle tear, while we were laboring on the chore day. It was the kind of wound that we would never give a second thought, and probably rarely bother to cover with a band-aid. He relayed how dangerous such a simple break in skin protection can be for someone living in a remote location, and, if ignored, the infection could become critical. He quickly cleaned it with an antiseptic and bandaged it. Point made.

As far as I recall, we handled the logistics of all us guys, and the two girls, with little effort. The sauna was something of a surprise, though. None of us had bathing suits. That didn’t matter to Will, because his process of bathing involved being naked. He just said that he would need to prepare the sauna in advance, give the girls instructions, and they could go first, on their own. Then, the rest of us would go after they were through.

Cyndie recalls this experience seeming so insane: to be left on their own, walking outside, naked, to jump through a hole in the ice, up in the middle of the woods in the dark of night. A bit of a risk maybe? She was sure there were eyes spying, too. (Sort of hoped, for the sake of safety.) If so, it wasn’t any of us.

She said the other girl went first and told her it wasn’t bad at all. When she jumped in and experienced the outrageous shock, she complained that the other girl had lied.

“Of course!” she was told, “If I told the truth, you wouldn’t have jumped in.”

We had a uniquely special week with Will Steger. Normally, his Lynx Tracks courses took place at a base camp of semi-permanent tents, away from his home. Instead, we had full access to the living space in his cabin and around the grounds. He had taken on the responsibility for 6 kids, and as such, became our ‘parent’ for the week. I recall him reporting how he nervously watched the temperature drop on the night he left us out for our solo final test, and his worrying about how we were doing. It was cold, but it was manageable. We all survived, safe and sound.

That week was worth so much more than the mere one hundred dollars I had scrounged up to pay for it.

That realization proved to be just one more lesson I learned from that amazing Interim week trip.