Sense of Place: Brittle Beauty

A cold-weather trek puts life into perspective.

By Rick Naymark

About 10 a.m., right on schedule, a steel-gray Suburban drove up to the front door of the Gunflint Lodge. The driver, a jolly man bundled in a puffy down jacket, hopped onto the frozen, snowy porch and hurried inside.

Shaking off the cold, he welcomed us to our cross-country skiing adventure along the Banadad, a 19-mile backcountry trail that began a few miles from the lodge door on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

My longtime friends Linda, Lois, Earl, and Dave and I were dressed in cross-country ski clothes, our skis waxed and ready, sitting on duffle bags stuffed with overnight gear. We were excited but also wary, given that the outside temperature had plunged to 30 below zero. The driver assured us we'd be warm enough on the trail and in the small, canvas-walled hut called a yurt, where we'd be spending the night. Then he loaded our gear, and we piled in. He drove us along a short stretch from the lodge to the Gunflint Trail road, turned left, and went another mile to the ski trailhead.

The driver threw the Suburban into park, jumped out, and helped us step down onto the snow-packed road. The sub-zero snow under our boots squeaked like Styrofoam.

"Have fun," he said. "I'll deliver your sleeping gear to the yurt. It will be waiting for you. We'll have some hot tea ready too."

With that, he climbed back in, threw it into gear, and drove off, his tires crunching loudly and his engine growling.

Suddenly, everything was perfectly still. The isolation of the near-wilderness loomed. We stood with our skis in the frozen silence, 8 miles from our next shelter. Before us stretched a long, straight trail across the indifferent terrain of northeastern Minnesota. We began to understand why this trail had been named Banadad, Ojibwe for lost.

We soon realized the air was too cold for us to stand and ponder our situation. Shaking ourselves from our momentary shock, we pulled on our backpacks, latched on our skis, adjusted our pole straps, and tentatively began to ski. Before long, we all found our pace and began to enjoy the rhythmic, almost hypnotic stride that would take us along the tracked trail. Our plan was to ski at a steady but not fast tempo. We wanted to generate enough heat to avoid frostbite, but not so much as to begin sweating. Sweat increases the penetration of the cold. We knew that if we kept moving, the temperature would be tolerable.

In fact, it was more than tolerable. It was magical. At minus 30, the air is condensed. Senses seem heightened. Sounds amplify and carry farther than normal. A crystalline halo forms on the horizon, and the brittle sun becomes a pale yellow.

Amid this beauty, awareness of risk made us both careful and present in the moment. After all, we were at the very northern tip of our very northern state, a stone's throw from Canada, on one of the coldest days, in the depth of winter, when bitter nights are long and the wind can suddenly pick up and shear you like frozen sandpaper. In arctic temperatures, any problem must be remedied immediately, because trouble begets trouble. If your fingers or toes grow numb, you cannot ignore them. It's imperative never to be alone, because if you are rendered helpless by an accident, you could freeze to death.

The Banadad trail is mostly flat, bordered by frozen marshes and occasional stands of birch and pine. Except for the sounds of our labored breathing and the scrunch of our skis, it was absolutely quiet.

The combination of beauty and bitter cold seemed to mesmerize us. We kept together, but stayed silent as though in some state of reverie.

At a moment of rest some two hours into the trek, Linda pulled out brownies from her backpack. They were hard as frozen candy bars. We tried to chew them, but our jaws were stiff from the cold.

All afternoon the sun hung near the horizon. Its meek light offered little warmth. In all directions we saw a broad blanket of snow, with only a faint whisper of dried grasses in marshy places and the arc of an occasional bird darting from one cedar to another.

In this solitude, aware of our dependence on one another, we felt a strong bond-unspoken, but clear as the air.

In late afternoon we arrived at a bend in the trail and saw two yurts just off to the left. The structures, patterned after shelters used by nomadic Mongolians, were constructed of white canvas stretched over a wooden frame shaped like half a melon. Their rotund shape makes them resilient to heavy snow and winds, and they retain heat with some efficiency.

The driver--also the yurt keeper--opened the door of one yurt and greeted us. He had tea waiting, and our luggage sat neatly in the center of the wooden platform floor. He went outside and returned with an armful of split logs, which he tossed onto the coals of a wood stove. The indoor temperature soon climbed to an acceptable 50 degrees.

Bunk beds lined the sides of our lodging. We set out our sleeping bags, pulled off our trail clothing and ski boots, and dressed in dry, warm flannel and down. It was only 4 o'clock, but the sky was already turning a deep, dark blue as the last weak rays of winter sun seemed to evaporate.

The yurt keeper had gone to the other yurt, about 50 feet away. When he came back, he invited us to have dinner with the family staying there. As we sat down and introduced ourselves to the family-a mother, father, and two grown sons from London-the yurt keeper began preparing a Mongolian feast.

Around a large, metal pot of boiling chicken broth in the center of a picnic table, he laid out platters of raw meats and vegetables. The idea was for each of us to load up the tines of a long fork with raw food and submerge it into the cauldron, called a firepot. In a few minutes, the freshly cooked morsels could be deposited on a bed of rice and dinner would be ready, Mongolian fondue style.

"Very delightful," said Victoria, the mother. "Similar to that feast we had while crossing Iceland, wouldn't you say, Rex?" Her husband nodded.

"Have you had Mongolian before?" Victoria asked me.

I shook my head. "We did buy a fondue pot at a garage sale, but we used it to melt wax for dipping pine cones."

"Pine cones?" Victoria asked, startled.

"Yes," I said, "you dip them in wax and then sprinkle glitter on them. They make great Christmas gifts as fire starters."

She gave a smile, cold as the outdoor air. "How clever," she said. "I suppose that's what you call American ingenuity."

One son, Reginald, tried to resuscitate this impromptu social event. "I say, do you get around much, doing things like this trek?"

I had to think a minute. "Well, we stick pretty much to home." How could I impress Reginald? I thought I'd tell him about our Aquatennial celebration. "In the summer we make rafts out of milk cartons and race them. And we fill a swimming pool with Jell-O. I think we hold the world record for Jell-O."

Reginald turned to his brother and winked. Then he addressed me. "We've rafted the Amazon River. And we've been to tremendous restaurants in Paris and Rome. I think I did have Jell-O once. I was in a Nairobi hospital, recovering from a tusk wound from a wild elephant during a horrific safari."

Thus went the dinner conversation. As soon as we could, we excused ourselves and went back to our own yurt.

One last chore remained-to use the outhouse. A bone-chilling outhouse encourages one to be efficient. That accomplished, I darted into our yurt, crawled into my sleeping bag, and stared at the ceiling, a scant foot above my nose. Were we really in a yurt, in the middle of nowhere? Or was this a dream? Nothing more than a layer of canvas separated us from air more than 60 degrees colder than a refrigerator.

In the night I awoke to the wailing and hooting of wolves. I quietly pulled on some clothes and a jacket, edged off the bunk, stepped into my boots, and tiptoed outside.

I was awestruck. A canopy of brittle, blinking stars arched above the dark silhouettes of trees. The air was still and cold-so cold that I felt frozen in time, as if I were trapped in amber like an ancient insect that is worth nothing except for the beauty that surrounds it.

Indeed, for this night, we were trapped-at bay in beautiful and harsh country, where the elements were so crystal clear that we could glimpse the sheer beauty of the universe.

I have not been on a safari or eaten in the best restaurants of the world. Yet this night in northern Minnesota, I was at the center of the universe, and no other beauty could rival what was before me-the stars, the howling wolves, the muffled snores of my companions, the crackling logs in the stove, the utter and precious stillness and darkness. I was filled with a deep sense of peace.

This gift of perspective awaits any adventurer, especially one willing to ski the Banadad-the lost-trail. In being lost to civilization for even a short time, we five trekkers found much strength, joy, and humility to bind us together in this memory for a lifetime.

If You Go.For information on yurts and other lodging, call Boundary Country Trekking, Grand Marais, 800-322-8327; or visit Gunflint Trail Vacation Planner.

Rick Naymark is a writer and marketing professional who lives in the Twin Cities.