Winter Backpacking: the Quehanna Wild Area, Part 1

If someone invites you along on a grand adventure, of course you say yes!

The weekend ahead of us was shaping up to be a hall-of-famer. With warmer temperatures and sunshine in the forecast, my husband asked - How would I like to accompany him on an early spring (or late winter; call it what you will) backpacking trip to our favorite backcountry campsite in the Quehanna Wild Area, in the Valley of the Elk? Of course I said yes!

Our last backpacking trip - in early November - felt like ages and ages ago. When it's been that long, it almost feels like you might have forgotten how. So to make things easier on ourselves, we packed in stages. Friday morning, we got out our gear and started organizing things. We packed our backpacks, sleeping bags, pads, tents, fold-up chairs, and groundsheets (as you might expect, our tabbycat Dexter was a big help in this endeavor), and put them all in my car.

All that remained to do on Saturday morning was to pack up the last few things, including the cooler, and leave for Quehanna. By shortly after 10 am, with a hearty breakfast under our belts, we were on the road. The day was shaping up to be spectacular, as promised, with bright sunshine and blue skies. We were ready for an adventure!

The surprise that awaited us in Quehanna was that the entire area was still under a pretty serious snowpack. Only a few of the parking lots had been plowed; we were fortunate to find that the one we usually park at was among those. So we parked the car, packed up our gear, and headed out into the snow.

It's a several-mile walk to the campsite from the parking lot. Hiking in isn't usually a big deal, but on this day it was, as we slogged through mile after mile of snow. In some places, there was none. As we got further into the backcountry, there was as much as 8 to 10 inches of the white stuff.

And the condition of it: the snow was melting, grainy, slippery, not unlike wet sand or quicksand, with every step taking as much as 25% more effort than usual. Which is to say that we encountered some pretty challenging hiking conditions. Especially so while carrying a backpack. Even more so if you haven't done it in a while . . .

And then once we arrived at the campsite, oh the joy! Finally, to take off our gear and put it down! Can there possibly be anybody happier and more relieved than a backpacker who has just completed a grueling, several-mile hike through surprisingly difficult conditions? There is a moment after you take your pack off when feel so light, you swear you can fly! Or dance! If only you had the strength left, that is.

We were a bit surprised to discover that even our campsite under the pines was under snowpack. Yes, it looks very different, doesn't it, from the last time we were here!?

Anxious to have all of the work of my day behind me, I immediately arranged my camping area for the night - pitched my tent, put some of my gear inside, hung my blue Kelty backpack and my mini cooler on nearby trees. My husband set his campsite up a stone's throw from mine. Then we grabbed a few things, including our little chairs, and headed out onto a sunny rock overlooking the Valley of the Elk. Let the fun begin!

And that is where - exhausted but happy - we spent a most enjoyable perfect, sunny, blue-sky afternoon. My husband had brought along his iPod nano and mini speakers, so we had plenty of tunes: a soundtrack for our adventure.

My husband is happiest of all when he is in the backcountry, far from civilization; and this day was no exception. We sat on our sunny rock (the rock that we tell each other "was probably here since the beginning of time") and he stretched his arms out wide, embracing the day.

When I think of my husband, this is how I want to think of him: happy, expansive, enjoying; living in the moment, doing exactly what he loves best. The song on the iPod as he stretched, smiled, enjoyed: quite fittingly, John Mellencamp's Your Life Is Now. May you always be this happy, my love, I thought, watching him, my heart smiling too; my  happiness increased by his. This is why I am here: for the beauty of this wild place; for him.

We had both brought reading materials - me, a silly girl and never one to travel light, having brought along the spring fashion issue of Vogue (which weighed in at approximately 10 pounds, or so it seemed!) - but we never got around to reading any of them. We just spent the day talking, listening to music, walking around, enjoying the view, spending time together, watching for elk.

I strolled down to the stream below us, one of the many tributaries of Mosquito Creek. And what did I find there but an elk horn! It was huge, much thicker and denser than a deer antler, with two sharp points and one broken-off point; it probably weighed in at about 5 to 7 pounds.

I photographed it in situ, then carried my trophy back up the hill with me to our rock overlooking the valley and the stream. I moved it around, took pictures. Might it have germs or cooties or something? I only thought to ask this after I'd messed with it for a while. Washed my hands, just in case.

My husband had seen elk crossing the nearby stream once before, and he spent a pretty much sleepless night in this campsite in mid-September, listening to the elk bugling all night long during mating season. So we knew they were here, or somewhere nearby, at least on occasion. But this was the first physical evidence we'd found of their presence so close to our campsite.

I pointed to the antler and laughed, thinking of the elk who had lost it, how surprised he must have been. "Can you imagine what he thought the first time it happened? Suddenly, he looks down and - oopsie! - a horn fell off! BROKEN! OH NO, ALL IS BROKEN!!! How long did it take before he realized that it was normal to lose it; that it would grow back? But before that . . .  oh no, the horror!" We laughed to think of the elk's surprise, his possible chagrin. Did an older elk take him aside, calm him down, explain it all? These are among the great mysteries of the wild.

In the bigger picture, it was to be the weekend of "springing forward," which is to say, advancing the time by an hour to move into daylight saving time. While the thought of gaining an hour of sunlight in the evenings seems quite pleasant in theory, as a creature of habit, I always find the time change quite disruptive, even disconcerting: a bunch of grown people playing games with the clock.

"And so we join hands and leap trustingly into the future," I say to my husband, as twilight falls.

"It's just us, messing with the clock," he says back; "The clock is just another machine we show our mastery of."

"Pretending, with our machines, that we finally control time," I offer. It all seems silly to me, way out here.

And so we concede to be part of the big conspiracy. We participate, we change the time, but it seems meaningless in the woods, where there are no schedules to be maintained except the ones we agree to. We have stepped outside of time, it seems; we will step back in at some juncture, but not yet. Out here we can be renegades, running with the elk, living outside of time. The thought pleases me. Me, a renegade. ("Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in," a wise man once said. I suspect he might have been a renegade too. We are keeping ourselves good company, we renegades.)

We ate our snacks, drank our drinks. I have developed a particular fondness for the little individually wrapped Cracker Barrel cheese snacks. Especially the white cheddar. We had several of these with us, a few for each of us. I wished for more.

When you are out backpacking, it is perfectly normal to begin fantasizing about food. The food you had before you left. The food you will have when you get home. We ate sandwiches; but we dreamed of steaks with all the accompaniments. Mashed potatoes. Steaming-hot gravy. Side dishes: hot vegetables drenched with butter. And bacon. And parmesan cheese. *sigh* Did I mention butter? And bacon?

Or at least those are some of the things I thought about. Ask other backpackers what they think and talk about while they are out in the woods. They may lie and tell you they talk and think about philosophy, about wild spaces, about the healing of the soul, about peace. Yes, those things may be well and good; and it's all true, all true. But any backpacker who is fully truthful will admit: we think these high and noble thoughts, yes; but also: we talk and dream of food.

We put on more clothes as the evening fell around us, moved from the sunny rock to the pines. I carried my elk antler - my trophy - along back to camp. Elk Horn Camp, I thought to myself. Our sort-of mascot, or at least part of one: an elk horn, from the Valley of the Elk. How fitting. And so a new name for our campsite was born . . .

Read about the rest of our backpacking adventures in my next blip!