Winter Backpacking: the Quehanna Wild Area, Part 2

In my prior blip, we left our intrepid backpackers - which is to say, my husband and myself - deep in the wilds of Pennsylvania, just as twilight began to fall. Let's check in to hear the rest of the story of their late winter/early spring backpacking adventure!

As dusk fell, we moved from our rock on the hill (that was there since the beginning of time) back into our camping area among the pines. I took the elk antler I had found by the stream along and placed it in front of my tent. A talisman, I thought. We put on a few more layers, lit a tiny Coleman lantern against the encroaching dark. Not the old-fashioned kind that requires actual matches, mind you, but a lighter, smaller, more modern LED lantern. Yes, technology is grand, isn't it? For backpackers, light is wonderful; a lighter light, even better; and a lighter light without flame, just marvelous!

We began to tidy up our camping area for the night, moving gear into our tents, sharing the last of our snacks. One of the tricks we've learned is to carry not only a full groundsheet to place under the tent (I have a blue one; you can see it peeking out under my tent in yesterday's blip), but also a half groundsheet to put things on while moving in and out of the tent. I usually put my half groundsheet right in front of the tent door, for the sake of convenience. I often stand or kneel on it as I enter or leave my tent.

We aren't much for making fires, even in winter; once you have built one, you become a slave to it, or an indentured servant at least, bound to bring wood to feed the flames. In the dark, it's difficult to discern what might be on the wood: poison ivy? ticks? Also, if you build a fire too close to your campsite, sometimes the embers float away and burn holes through your gear. This is not a good thing. So, all things considered, we don't usually bother with fire. Even when it's cold. As it was in this case.

Let me add this bit of delightfulness: as the temperature had dropped, the snowy area where we were camping - that we had tromped down all day long in our back-and-forth, back-and-forth to the tents - had frozen solid and turned into a sheet of ice.

I discovered this by accident, and here is how. I went to step on that half groundsheet lying just outside my tent, only to find that on the newly frozen surface, it - or, more accurately, I - behaved not unlike a greased pig on a luge. Which is to say, it took off, I lost purchase, and I went for a quick and surprisingly energizing spin on my groundsheet. After a bit of flailing, I regained my balance: "Watch out for the groundsheet," I heard myself mutter; "It's a slippery one!"

By about 9:30, my eyelids were heavy and I was wearing pretty much every piece of clothing I'd brought: a t-shirt, a fleece shirt, a fleece hooded pullover, long underwear, fleece pants, hiking pants over top of those. I generally pack a good-sized tote bag with me, and as I got into my tent, I dumped everything that was left in my backpack into it, hung the empty backpack on the nearest tree, and took the tote into my tent with me for the night. I carefully removed my hiking pants - which I'd spent the day walking through poison ivy in - rolled them up, and placed them inside the tent about a foot from where I would be sleeping.

"Do you have any pillow material?" my husband asked. I got out my flashlight, searched in vain. Usually whatever spare clothing I may have, I tuck into a stuffsack and lay my head on that. But every piece of clothing I had, I was wearing. Except for the poison-ivy pants. Using those for pillow material didn't seem like a very good idea. I did have a fleece sleeping bag liner, but I planned to crawl inside that to give myself a few more degrees of warmth inside my sleeping bag for the night. No pillow material: oh well, I'd try to tough it out without any. And so I got into my tent, zipped up the front door, climbed into the fleece sack, slid down into my sleeping bag, and immediately went to sleep.

Now here, my friends, is where I tell you the hard truth about backpacking on snow. And that is this: snow may SEEM like a soft surface to sleep on. But the warmth of your body lying on the snow - even through a fleece liner, a sleeping bag, several sleeping pads, a tent, and a groundsheet - will melt the snow beneath you and turn it to ice. I recall having nearly the same experience sleeping on sand - it LOOKS soft, but sleeping on it is not unlike sleeping on cement. Sleeping on snow is like sleeping on very cold cement. Except I suspect cement might actually be more comfortable.

Also, I am a person who sleeps on her side. To get to sleep, I must lie on my right side. If I can't lie on my right side, I can't fall asleep. Once I'm asleep, I wake up every few hours and switch sides. Right, left, right, left. When I sleep in the same bed as my husband, we spoon together; flip together; he humors me; it's cozy.

So I started out on my right side (sans pillow, alas, poor planning for me), fell right to sleep, and woke up a few hours later with a stiff shoulder and a sore neck. Clutching my poison-ivy pants, with my face buried in them. (The head wants what the head wants, people; and in this case, it wanted a PILLOW, no matter what it might be made of. Or covered in.) EW!!!

I quickly put the poison-ivy pants back in their proper place, stripped off my hooded fleece jacket, balled that up, and placed it beneath my head. Ahh, much better. I heard coyotes yipping down in the valley somewhere near the stream. And - oh, wait - through the tent's overhead stargazer panel, a glimpse of light in the sky. On a clear evening, I don't bother putting on the tent fly. I like to watch the night sky. Maybe that light was the moon? Hmm, the moon, I thought, how nice, and flipped onto my left side and went right back to sleep.

A few hours later there was a loud sound outside my tent:

KRUNCH! KRUNCH! KRUNCH! KRUNCH!

I always expect that in this campsite in the Valley of the Elk, at some point, elk are destined to wander through our camp during the night. I thought about the elk antler I had brought back from the edge of the stream; about how we had laughed together about the elk who had lost it. Elk revenge, I thought crazily; they have come to get the horn back! But I meant no harm by it. Crazy thoughts, but this is the sort of thing you think in the night. In the dark. Far from town. Me, wielder of the magic horn, summoner of the spirit of the wild elk. Yeah, lucky me. I'll put it back where it belongs first thing in the morning, I promised.

KRUNCH! KRUNCH! KRUNCH! KRUNCH! louder! closer!

By this time I was sitting straight upright, holding my breath. The night was dark. The moon was gone. A shadowy figure suddenly appeared just outside my tent. Turns out it was my husband. Breathe in. Breathe out.

"Hey, hon," I heard my husband say; "It's starting to snow." (So much for the zero percent precip forecast those lying weather weenies shared before we left. Zero precip, my fanny.) And indeed I listened and heard a tiny sound, light as angel wings: the sound of snow against my tent. Then the feel of light snow against my face.

"Do you have your fly with you inside the tent?" he asked. I turned on my flashight, found the fly, unzipped the front of the tent, handed it out to him. He began putting it on my tent. What a guy! He had come to save me from the precipitation!

And then, as I lay there, I heard him start to slip and slide. Oh no, he'd stepped on the groundsheet! Suddenly I heard . . . the sound of singing! He was singing . . . and dancing! Remember that song The Twizzle, from an old Dick Van Dyke episode? It features a bunch of people in a room gyrating in a dance not unlike the twist.

They've been playing it as part of an advertisement on MeTV, a TV channel we like, whose programming consists primarily of old TV shows that we all used to watch: Perry Mason, the Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Big Valley, and at 4 pm each week day, our very favorite show of all, The Wild Wild West, which I'm seldom home in time to watch, but my husband tapes it so we can watch it later; but I digress.

Yes, amazingly enough, my husband was out in the dark, on the icy surface, dancing the twist, singing about how "Everybody's doing the TWIZZLE! Ya twist a little and ya twist a lot . . . and when you really get HOT, that's the twizzle!"

Impressive, I thought, and I think I may have laughed out loud. Heard my husband finish up attaching my fly, then head back over to his own tent to put his own fly on. Even before taking care of his own tent, he had come over to take care of mine. Now this, folks, is the measure of true love. Hmm, true love, I thought, how nice, and flipped onto my right side and went right back to sleep.

I woke up hours and hours later. The sun was starting to break through the clouds and I leaped out of my tent, grabbed a few things including my little chair, skirted carefully around the slippery half groundsheet, and headed for our rock on the sunny hill. My husband met me there, and that is where we spent the rest of our morning and had our lunch, before coming back to our tents to pack up our gear for the hike out.

Packing things up was quite the ordeal. Not only was there the usual backpacking challenge of fitting everything you brought back into that backpack. How and why could I have carried in so much crap? I thought to myself, eyeing the 20-pound spring fashion issue of Vogue (yes, I think it grew heavier overnight; I could swear it only weighed 10 pounds when I packed it in).

But also there was the challenge of packing things up on a semi-frozen, semi-melting snowpack. Any time you put anything down, it got wet! I had started out putting everything on the half groundsheet. But it was not completely waterproof: I picked up my sleeping bag from it and found it had a big wet spot. So I started removing things from the tent and hanging them over the tent, then hanging them over the tree branches as the tent itself came down. Yes, the closest trees were pines, so I was also mindful to watch out for pine pitch.

Finally, we were ready to walk out. I strapped the last few things on, heaved a sigh, and stood waiting, while my husband lifted my backpack and settled it onto my stiff, sore shoulders. "It feels even HEAVIER than yesterday!" he said; "How is that even possible!?" You'd have thought that after I drank all the drinks I'd brought, that pack would have been lighter. It MUST have been lighter. But it sure didn't feel like it!

The elk antler, all 5 to 7 pounds of it - too heavy and awkward to carry out, and besides, I sort of liked having it here - I decided to leave at the campsite as a talisman. Elk Horn Camp, I thought again, as I turned to snap a few pictures of our empty campsite. "Take only photographs; leave only footprints," I thought to myself . . . "and an elk horn," I added, with a giggle.

Hiking out, we recapped our adventures of the night before.

"You put my fly on my tent in the middle of the night," I said; "In fact, you put mine on before you put on your own."

"Yes," he said; "It was starting to snow and I was afraid you'd get wet, with just that stargazer panel above you."

"Um," I said, looking at him from the corner of my eye; "Do you remember that you were . . . singing? and . . . dancing?"

"Ah," he said. "Don't know if you noticed, but it was quite slippery out there. I had to dance and twist to keep my balance! And singing helped keep me awake!"

"Mm-hmm," I said; looked away; kept walking. I turned around: "You know what I hear?" I asked. "That EVERYBODY! is doing the TWIZZLE!" And I took a silly little sidestep; twisted, just a little. We both laughed.

We hiked back through our own tracks from the day before, and marveled at how melted-out and big and icy our footprints had become, even in just one day's time. You'd have sworn they'd been there a week! A large pile of deer poo filled one of our tracks: fresh, brown pellets, perhaps just a few hours old. (This is called "reading sign," people. It may look easy in the movies, but telling who went where when and whose poo is whose is much more difficult in real life.)

The hiking conditions were similar to the day before, with slightly less snowpack in spots, but not much less. But we were mentally prepared for it this time. And we were hiking from worse conditions into better ones. We walked back to the parking lot, and in just a few minutes had stowed our gear inside. Changed shoes. Grabbed a fresh drink. Sat in our seats in the car - the most comfortable sit I'd had in what felt like days! Headed for home.

Our Quehanna backpacking adventure had concluded. And so we left the woods for as good a reason as we went there. Which is to say, we were pretty darn hungry, and so we headed home for sustenance and other creature comforts: a hot meal, fresh clothes, a soft bed, a return to civilization as we know it.

And to the new time. Spring time, almost. One hour ahead. Dark in the mornings. More light in the evenings. Changing all the clocks in the house, renegotiating meal times with the Tabby. (Fortunately, he's much happier about springing forward than falling back.) Felt a little confused by it all. Thought about that old Chicago tune: Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?

And I can't believe I've gotten this far without telling you about this picture. This is a photo of the Quehanna Wild Area in northern central Pennsylvania, not far from our campsite. (Quehanna in this area much resembles sections of the Dolly Sods wilderness area of West Virginia, a place described by some using words like "savage grandeur," which I think describes quite well both of these places that we love.) Through the pines and tucked back in to the right is our campsite. Straight ahead is the far line of tamaracks. Between the tamaracks and the pines lies the Valley of the Elk and its charming little stream that burbles through the valley, sometimes so animated and loud that it almost sounds like laughter, or a voice.

Ah, time, the stream we go a-fishing in. A stream lined with the occasional elk antler. And I have it on good word that somewhere back there, beyond those pines, there is a wild man who gets up in the middle of a winter's night to dance, while at once serenading and rescuing his one true love.

And she, a taker of pictures and a teller of tales, wields a talisman that - it is rumored - has the power to summon creatures of great magic in the night, in this wild and starkly beautiful place.