12/13/14
As determined as I was to get to the end of the road in Cordova, I fear that goal is as much in jeopardy as my quest to see the aurora. Damn. With the temp hovering around 37, this time I got all the way to mile 28 (out of 36, where the road washes out) in fairly decent conditions. OK. Let’s define that Alaska-style: the gravel on top of the smooth tar was mostly small, but interrupted periodically by patches of soft-ball sized glacial moraine that made the absence of speed-limit signs both obvious and laughable.
The further I went, the more I noticed a little glaze. The Cordovan glaze, a breath of ice slick exhaled from the humid heavens, that can appear anywhere here, anytime.
After slowing from 50, to 45 to 40, and eventually 25 miles an hour, I despaired of ever getting to where I was going in daylight. There is a wonderful math term for this phenomenon—the asymptote. It’s a geometric line that approaches a point, getting infinitely closer, but never, never getting there. Usage: The asymptotic drive I was on came to a sudden stop when the Cordovan glaze morphed into solid ice. The landscape had not changed—flatlands of the Copper River Delta spanning the Chugach mountains to the north and the Bay of Alaska to the south. Just suddenly. Boom. Thick ice. Fortunately I was only going about 15 mph by then, but still, it took me about a half mile of prudent braking to slow the car to a stop. Then the 8 point turn in low-4 wheel (I’m getting good at this) and a hairy half mile back trying to avoid sliding into the bogs on both sides of the road, and I’m on nothing but thin ice from there back to the Airport at mile 12, and cell-phone rescue distance (past mile 12 — no reception). Such a relief. Sort of.
Chapter 2, wherein, before getting to rescue distance, I get out of the car…
Bob, the night LPN, has given me a print-out of the best hikes around here. On the way back to town I take the turnout to Saddlebag Glacier trailhead and pick up a few discarded beer cans spoiling the otherwise pristine drive, hoping I don’t die in a ditch out here and they think I’ve been drinking. A long, winding dirt track ends at a cul-de-sac where I find a path of deep, thick woods rivaling Dorothy’s in Oz. I peer into it, gauging the height of the dense Sitka pines, the meager daylight struggling through. I take a few hesitant steps away from the safety of the jeep onto the thick, spongy peat of the forest floor. I am wrapped in shadows. Silence. Unbidden the thought springs into my head: lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my. Just as quick as that I spring back to the jeep. I am nothing, if not decisive.
I drive on to McKinley trailhead, and Pipeline Lakes, each narrow path less promising than the last. Is there nowhere to bond with nature that doesn’t feel like the opening pages of a Stephen King novel?
I look through my hiking guide again and locate the most innocuous trail I can find: Haystack. It’s less than a mile and climbs the remains of a small glacial promontory (that’s what the “haystack” is) and promises a great view of the delta extending to the bay of Alaska. As I pull in the turn-out I’m rewarded with a view of a boardwalk trail entering a wood that looks much less intimidating than the previous options.
I bundle up because the temp is noticeably colder here (likely responsible for the ice up the road), tying an extra scarf, babushka-style, around the headband covering my ears, grabbing an pair of extra mittens, and stuffing a cell phone in each pocket. (Which is stupid because I’ve confirmed there’s no signal out here. I need my iphone for pics, but I figure if a bear drags me somewhere closer to town perhaps I’ll be able, in extremis, to call for help with the local phone, which gets favored reception, I’ve been told. This is how I think when I’m alone in the wilderness. You?
I climb the first 2 dozen steps, and notice how they’re covered with rope mesh to make traction better. How civilized. A walk in the park! Yay! I am relieved. After catching my breath from the climb, I realize I must, um, relieve myself. Not being overly modest and completely without a reason to duck behind a bush, I moon any creatures who care to look and take the most exposed, woodsy pee of my life, leaving my scent for any and all animals who care to investigate. Hah! Ohio was here! I understand male dogs all of a sudden. This semi-powerful animal feeling passes and I become vulnerably human again. Not particularly fast or strong, and certainly not armed. I can still see the jeep, 30 yards behind and below me. I have a fleeting thought I should have taken concealed carry classes. I pick up a 3 foot long dead stick. Tap it on a tree. It is cudgel-worthy. This will be un-concealed carry.
The woods in front of me appear a little darker, but not too bad. I decide to sing O Holy Night in my best fat-lady-at-the-opera voice to warn any and all living things of my presence, just in case they hadn’t caught my intimidating scent. I know all three verses. I plunge in.
The path remains mostly boardwalk. I hum and whistle and talk to myself. The moss is amazing—I bury my fingers to the knuckle 
and still don’t feel the earth below. It covers everything, both living and dead. Huge, heaps of lush, green carpet extend far and wide and up, up, up onto the trees and every limb. It is beautiful. How I would love to see it in the sunshine! I look at my watch, aware I must not dally. It’s 2 pm and sundown comes even quicker when it’s as overcast as today. I figure another 15 minutes and I’m sure to get to the end of the trail. Five minutes to look around and take some pics, and hike out before 3. I’ve stopped to read a few signs posted along the trail advising me to look and listen for the animals of the forest. I see nothing alive. I hear not a sound but the wind soughing high in the trees. How far have I gone? I’ve lost track with all my stops. Did it get just a bit darker?
I pass a bench. Inviting, except it’s not. If I sat there, rested, things would be looking at me. Things I can’t see or hear, but that sign back there said were here. And as I walk further I start to notice these huge holes under the trees. I see why 
I missed them at first, I was so enchanted by the moss, that I didn’t notice how it covered and protected these gigantic spaces where things might live under the tangle of trunks and roots all around me. Things like…Well, have you ever had a sudden, brand new thought, a thought that you realize you really should have had at some earlier point in your life? So here was my revelatory thought: where the hell do bears hibernate anyway? How could I have this many years of education and not know the answer to that? Do they over-winter in a cave? Sleep beneath a snowbank? Or slumber away under a cozy, cushiony pile of moss in the deep, deep forest? In which case, has all my racket a chance of raising a sleeping bear from its nap? Crap.
Fear has become a hammer in my heart.
I look ahead, I cannot see the end of the trail. I look behind, and there is no sign of the descent to the car. To my right and left are bear-sized mossy dens, which seem to multiply now that I know what to look for. I vainly try to think my way out of this. Do I shove these fears aside and push onward—ha,ha,ha! What a story—or do I accord them some credibility and hot foot it out of here? It is the realization that I have lost my extra set of mittens that makes my mind up. I do not like, or tolerate, carelessness. To have dropped them is a sign I am an amateur.
Unworthy.
Unprepared.
I place my pre-hensile tail remnant between my legs and get out of there as fast as I can without falling, reclaiming the mittens (by a giant tree hole, of course) on the way out. My aerobic activity for the day: scaring the %*&@ out of myself!
Post Script —
bears mostly winter in dens…tunneled under the forest floor