After 90 minutes in Kurt’s car, I stepped out at the top of the pass. My boots hit crusted asphalt under corrugated snow.
It was awkward work then, prepping our packs and sleds, strapping gaiters over pant legs with mittened hands. I was buoyed with the usual excitement of a trip, an adventure with strangers into the wilderness, but other thoughts were on my mind, as well. The little brown house.
Bending down to buckle a snowshoe, breathing hard as layers of clothing pressed on my abdomen, I heard Kurt say, “Last chance to put some stuff on my sled. Any takers?”
“No, I’m good,” I popped up to say, smile across my face.
It was my first winter backpacking trip. The weight of my pack was a concern, but I wanted to carry it. I fussed over things on the floor of the apartment, appalled at how quickly the pounds accrued: Four-season tent, burly sleeping pad, zero degree bag, extra clothes, a red metal shovel that folded, bungeed to the outside of the pack. Add gaiters, glove liners, mittens, goggles, hard sided water bottles because bladders and straws would freeze.
In the photo we took, posed at the end of a dirt road invisible under its carpet of unblemished snow, my pack looked enormous, topped by a ridiculous red coat strapped in place. The forecast predicted a low of zero.
When we arrived at the target camping area, what I could see of the place was untouched. No one had been there; the snow untrampled and piled high against the trunks of aspens, and beyond them, the stately lodgepoles with their uniform trunks reaching up and up.
In order to make this a camp, we had to make flat, stable platforms for our tents. We had to establish trails from tent to tent, and to a communal kitchen we would build, and to the spots back in the woods where we would relieve ourselves. You don’t want to be breaking trail with every step, all day long. The first step was stamping down lines of trail with our snowshoes, in a single file, each subsequent person flattening the snow to a deeper line. Then, once we picked our tent sites, each camper was responsible for flattening that themselves.
I chose a spot away from the group, in a clearing among the pines. It was peaceful; sparkles on needles releasing to make a soft thud on the ground. Snow dropping into snow. My snowshoes kicked up powder as they lifted out of the deep stuff and I staggered sideways, losing my balance, laughing at myself, stamping down the other foot. I outlined a square.
The idea was to make a platform hard as concrete. On top of that, I pitched the tent, driving the snow stakes into the ground and stepping on them. It would take hours for the stakes to harden in place, but the snow does become like concrete, sealing in the stakes so they don’t rip out.
That night, snow came down on my orange tent, tucked into the trees below Twin Cones. I couldn’t get warm, so I went to bed at 5 pm. The sun was down, anyway, and the wind was up. I ate a Snickers bar hardened by the cold, inside my sleeping bag with all my layers on. I thought about the house.
I was under contract on the house. I cheerily told the people in the winter camping group about it throughout the day; their congratulations butting up against my doubt. I was 37 now. I never planned to settle in Colorado, but in the absence of settling, I was just hanging around. Collecting paychecks. Perusing the dating apps.
My dad, ever conspiratorial, said the end was coming. The shit would hit the fan. Don’t put money in real estate. Put it in gold. Hide it in the ground somewhere.
I was a single woman, without many handy skills, buying a house on my own. A decrepit fixer-upper, at that. Was I stupid?
Someone walked by my tent.
“Lisa, ya in there?” A man’s voice asked.
I was under contract on the house. I’d have to make a home of it, somehow. This felt like a commitment to the mountains, as much as it did to the city. It was the possibility of staying in one place, pushing my weekends out of the bars and into the woods, that I could get excited about.
I was a dive bar woman once; arguing energetically with men over smoking tables about the history of the Labor movement, the impact of suffragettes on Prohibition, and who knows what else, and there were nights I went home with them. But more often, I stumbled to another bar, and another, standing in doorways to get out of the wind. I fished for a lighter in my purse, lit a cigarette.
Those were the wildernesses I swore to give up. I wanted to be someone else. Ten inches of snow fell that night.
Maybe I’d get a dog. I could landscape in spring. The little brown house could become a sunrise cottage, lit pink as it faced east, surrounded by delphinium and sage. Tickseed.
How does a person become someone different? I guessed, it starts with commitment. The rest was unknown. Maybe, the shit would hit the fan. The end would come.
I saw it in my headlamp when I went to pee. Trees growing in every direction, stepping back in formation from camp, snow blowing sideways over a deeper dark I couldn’t touch.
It was the right place for me.
Over the tent, the snow flew unfettered at an angle from the sky, and it piled up around the tent, on the sides of it, dampening every noise.
This is a story about when I purchased my house in 2019 and first tried winter backpacking. Subscribe for more.