Winter in the Woods
By David Huebner

I just finished raking back all the pine needles, limbs, and extraneous woody debris that has accumulated around my cabin over the course of the winter. Small blades of grass are already piercing the surface of the earth, and several leafy plants stand a few inches tall. The air is full of scents; the drying of wet wood and pine duff, the beginnings of plant life, the warmth of the sun on dirt that has not seen such light in months; the air is alive with the songs of birds and new insects. My car sits in the front yard, and other workers for the resort are milling around slowly pulling the plywood panels from the doors and windows of the other buildings. Yesterday I drove the narrow ten mile road that leads to the resort and my home for the first time in seven months. Since November 7th I have been hiking and skiing my way in and out of home over a direct five mile route to town. Today is May 29th. I've skied 129 days to date, and may snag a few more before the last snow melts from the nearby ski area. Feeling the breeze and warmth of summer blowing through my open door, I sit on the porch and wonder how I am different now. How have the past seven months of off and on solitude, skiing intensively by myself and shuttling heavy packs of food given me a new set of eyes and mind to experience life with?

In junior high school I was moved and inspired by Henry David Thoreau's philosophical musings in Walden, and now I recall the lines where he describes why he moved to the woods at the shore of Walden pond, and wonder how my own description would harmonize with his:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meannes to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

All winter I have been asking myself what true, deep, personal answers I have for why I moved to this valley, this remote cabin, this solitary winter existence skiing day after day with the companionship of the trees, birds, and mountains. I have come to realize that I moved to this cabin to escape all the distractions of modern America: money, cars, jobs, schedules, bills; to take advantage of that time to communicate undisturbed with nature, with Life so to speak. To ski and tour and wander purely enveloped by the wilderness. To look deep into my soul, and watch my spirit reflect in the snowflakes of each storm, the roughness of each red fir, the thrill of each powder turn. Like Thoreau, to find out what Life is all about at it’s root, disregarding the many branches and odd leaves we humans have added over the centuries. I have been living in the mountains for several years already, but never with the opportunity for complete immersion in the moments of each day, each month, each rage and calm of winter weather, each minute of my stream of conciousness. I think life is very much like floating down a river: you have a relatively short amount of time to position yourself appropriately for each rapid, and when you enter the rapid you are limited to your natural, instinctual reactions. I had a few days to decide whether I wanted to take the "job" of living down in this remote valley, and it really only took me a few seconds; how could I pass it up? There was no deep philosophical musings, no long range outlook, just simply a positioning of myself for this new, upcoming rapid of life. Now that I've spent the past seven months navigating on instinct, I can eddy-out, sit back on the porch, drink my coffee, and reflect on what lessons I may have learned; about the world, about myself.

All winter I have had periods where I missed my friends, missed the more social atmosphere of town life, missed the community feel of a job. But these moments would generally be surrounded by more intense, nearly blinding flashes of sublime existence skiing through the creaking burnt forest above the cabin, reaching the top and pulling off the climbing skins, and gliding down through two miles of turns to the natural hot spring near my cabin. Weeks where I spent everyday outside skiing up and down the mountains around my home, tens of thousands of vertical feet spent brushing up against white fir, hemlock, red fir, and lodgepole, lifting tons of snow breaking out trails to different slopes, melding my body and muscles to the contours of each run, looking out at an ocean of terrain that will take a lifetime to ski, watching the morning sun rise through prisms of snow crusted trees splitting rainbows across my face. Days where I felt as calm and wise as the trees, indifferent as the rugged mountain ranges surrounding me, yet light and fast as the birds, with the mind of a human—always thinking, yet sometimes inexplicably silent. Skiing became an art of communication, a practice of nothingness, a meditation on the passage of life and time. My "life" essentially became nothing more than living.

The toughest part of my solitude was adjusting to the sudden loss of importance, the sudden fact of purely personal decision making. Everything I did, I had to do for myself, because I wanted to do it. I had no one to tag along with, and talking over the phone is very different from talking in person. My actions only mattered to me, my happiness was of my own making and relied on no one else. Without pure solitude one may not realize how many decisions are in some way made for them by someone, or something else. In solitude, it is you and the rapid, with only your instincts, your desires, to shape your movements—gone is success or failure, only levels of happiness remain.

I realized that a great amount of peace and happiness developed out of moving at my own pace, for my own reasons, to the places I wanted to go. There was a wonderful sense of feeling completely lost, discovering something new and unexpected everyday. It allowed me to better appreciate and love those times spent with others, following their ideas and motivations, and absorbing their friendship. I was generally just happy to be outside, not bent on achieving anything in particular. The balance of both worlds—one where I had a personal place to disappear and let my soul run free, and the other just over the mountain where I had friends, shops and an array of possibilities for each moment—gave me a unique vision of my reality in this heavily modernized 21st century America where so many don't have any idea what they might do without a car and a 24 hour grocery store; without a town, or other people around. Are you fantasized by what it might be like to watch a wild valley after all the people leave, the seasons turn, and the world jumps back in time right before your eyes? I was and probably will be for the rest of my life. I struggle for the right words to convey the primordial beauty of pure wildness that has enveloped my life for most of the past seven months. How to describe being the only pair of human eyes and ears, to be watching without watching the wilderness proceed as it has forever?

The woodpecker that was chipping for insects at shoulder level two feet away seemingly oblivious to my presence skiing up the hill; the trees that came roaring to the ground under the hand of the storm winds, miraculously missing my cabin; the mystical creak, and moan and roar of the wind in a forest; the 30 inches of snow that fell in 24 hours; the eight or more inches of rain that fell in 16 hours; the bear that pushed on my door, gave up, and walked out over the pass to town; the days spent skiing till I couldn't move; the first day I linked powder turns all the way to the cabin; the first day I had to walk across dirt to get to my cabin; days spent soaking at the hot spring as the world turned. I felt left behind, but I also felt like maybe I had jumped ahead. Where was I in the conciousness of past and future? What does past and future mean to a wilderness environment? Nothing? I spent so many days free from the normal sensations of passing time that time itself became arbitrary. I lived by the sun, the storms, and every nuance inbetween.

But, getting back to one of my initial musings, how have I changed? How am I different now when I go through life among the surroundings we all know so well: highways, traffic lights, schedules, 24 hour grocery stores, jobs, bills, parties? I have grown quieter, more humble and mellow, more compassionate and understanding of others motives and decisions. I have realized those things which are unique to myself, and found confidence and joy in them. I know much more about who I really am underneath the tanned skin, ratty long blond hair, matted reddish beard, and strong, trim build characteristic of the average mountain bum. I am not the average mountain bum, or maybe there's nothing really very average about any mountain bum, but I have realized my creative desires, my passion for reading and writing, for film and photography, my existence happily satisfied to just be in the mountains unattached to sport or achievements, my dreams allowed to move unhindered by "reality", my life designed to follow no path at all, leaving the ground undisturbed for another to tread anew. I have also realized a strong desire to return to sustainability. To find a place sometime in the future where all is in balance: eating from my own garden, my own animals, relying little on an automobile, on money. I have tasted a hint of that primordial apple when all was free, and it is hard to look at the civilized world again.

I find it interesting that of all the stories I could tell of my backcountry ski adventures, the most lasting impression I have to convey is one of solitude, and discovery of self. That the wilderness is not so much teacher, but teach-less—a natural, unhindered, spontaneous, indifferent balancing chaos which when in contact with human order denies such organization, importance, names, or ego, rejects everything which is not pure and wild, and leaves the visitor with just their lone self, their simple beating heart, their ears, their eyes, their hands and feet, and their mind to operate it all in the proper unison with which to experience the movement of time, and place, and season.