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.

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…

Recently, I awoke from a dream about an experience I had when I was a teenager. In the dream, I was telling someone about a pivotal event that shaped my love for winter, ever after. I have resurrected a story I wrote about that event, which I published in my online community years ago. Since it is too long for one blog post, I am going to break it up into a 3-part series. The adventure begins…

During my Junior year of high school, in the winter of 1975-76, I spent a week learning winter survival skills from Will Steger, a local teacher who went on to become one of the world’s great polar explorers. It was a monumental experience for me; one that could just as easily have never happened.

It was a relatively new trend for high schools to offer an interim session, similar to something colleges and universities featured. We were required to register in advance, and were to fill our week by choosing from options like, learning to play Bridge, first aid, chess, cooking, or SCUBA diving, among other like-type activities. The interim idea was well-intentioned, but it was up against the cynicism and apathy of teens at that time, and it seemed the students felt that the choices offered were, for the most part, “uncool.”

There was one option that stood out from all the rest. Instead of just an afternoon, or a day or two, this single choice would take up the whole week. Our Physics teacher had helped his friend build a rustic cabin, nestled into a hill on a cliff overlooking a lake. During one of his visits, as the friend shared details of a winter training school he was starting, our teacher talked him into becoming one of our interim options.

Will Steger came down to our school to do a presentation, which is the way he marketed his new winter skills school, “Lynx Tracks.” He narrated an amazing slide show of photographs he had taken, and used a background soundtrack with recordings he collected of birds, wind, water and wolves. I was fascinated. But this option would cost $100! That was too much for me. I didn’t even consider it a possibility.

Some of my friends said they were actually considering it. It was a big step to get me over my reluctance to spend that kind of money, but with a little extra coercion, and plenty of support, I was persuaded, and I committed to join them. Eventually, it became a group of 6. Shortly after we had all signed up, my high school announced that, due to the lack of participation by students in registering, our interim week had been cancelled. Now, that is what I call, “uncool.”

Our initial dismay over this news was soon turned to gloating. Due to the significance of the trip we had selected, and the money we had committed –not to mention, the generous offer Will Steger had made to even take on a group of otherwise unchaperoned high school kids– our interim option was allowed to proceed, even though all the others were dropped, replaced by regular classes.

I recall scrounging a backpack and assembling the best of my winter boots and gear. And I was excited for the travel accommodations that were worked out. I got to ride up to Ely, in a car with 2 girls (one that just happened to be my future wife, Cyndie) and 1 other guy. Road trip! Unsupervised road trip!

It was a little daunting to be heading out on this adventure, completely responsible for ourselves. More than once, we questioned the wisdom of the variety of adults who had either set this trip in motion, or simply allowed it to play out. The instructions we received were pretty vague, and consisted mostly of verbal descriptions from our Physics teacher, regarding where to leave our car by a lake, and to then just wait to be met by the man, himself, …Will Steger.

Continues tomorrow…