Never Alone, page 31
I pour my heart out to the camera, explaining my epiphany, explaining that I have to go and why, and then I sling it over my shoulder and walk back to the cabin, still dazed by the rapid turnaround within me.
There’s a chaga fungus in a birch tree close to the cabin. I’ve been waiting to harvest it until it was my last option or I was at the end of my time out. It’s a ceremonial gesture to cut it now, the ringing of the gong at the end of my last act.
I spend the evening living it up. Drinking strong chaga tea, eating a triple ball of pemmican, having a big fire and burning most of my wood. The last thing to do tomorrow is to pull my snares and use the satellite phone that is set up to call one number and one number only—the Alone production team.
69
The Ancestors Speak
In the morning, fatigue and dread of what I’m planning to do weigh heavy on me, and it takes me a long time to pull my snares and erase the evidence of my trapline from the forest.
Finally, I head out to the rock arena, where the satellite phone has the best signal, and I sit with it in my lap, staring up into a cloudy sky. I look out over the vast frozen water before me. Darkness hovers on the far edge of it. I can feel dusk approaching even though it’s early afternoon and it’s been only a few hours since sunrise.
I’m a bundle of nerves and raw emotion as I lift the phone and turn it on. As I scroll through the menu options, my fingers tremble so badly that I can hardly select “dial production.”
I have gone over this conversation in my head a hundred times since my epiphany yesterday, but as I practice it again now, one last time, to the droning sound of the dial tone, I can barely squeak out, “This is Woniya. I am calling to tap out.” I try again, but the lump in my throat feels so hard and tight that I can barely breathe, much less speak. Instead of hitting “dial,” I drop the phone into the snow and burst into tears.
Where did all my resolve go?
I felt so certain yesterday, but thinking about making the call now, everything within me screams out against the choice. What is going on? And then it occurs to me—sure, I had a deep knowing yesterday, but what if this is a deep knowing of an entirely different kind?
My thoughts start to snowball, ricocheting off the inside of my skull. What if going isn’t the right choice? I know I’m starting to be in rough shape, but I have no idea how anyone else out here is doing. That storm, these temperatures, the minimal daylight—they’ve all been brutal, and they’ve got to have been as tough on anyone else still out here as they have on me. I’ve been thinking that without more food, my chances of winning were close to nil, but we’re already past the seventy-day mark. The Mongolia season, the harshest season thus far and nothing compared to these conditions, was decided in less than sixty days. Could this one be almost finished? Is that why I suddenly find myself unable to make the call? Is something inside me reacting to an intuitive sense that I am on the very edge of winning? My gut sense is that it is.
I think I’m still in the running. I could have this thing. I could win it. That would be tremendous—for me, for women, for everything I care most about.
The whirring in my mind spreads to my limbs and I’m up and moving. How many days will it take? What do I have to do to be out here a little longer? I just pulled all my traps and burned most of my firewood, damn it! I look at the sun—it’s not yet brushing the horizon. I head out with my saw and harvest firewood until dusk. Finally, I let the darkness and descending cold push me back inside where I drink a pot of lukewarm chaga tea. I have enough wood to keep me warm tonight, but the sight of the nearly empty firewood alcove sends me back outside again, where I work fiendishly in the feeble light of my headlamp collecting several more days’ worth of firewood.
The next morning, I wake up determined, but it’s as if gravity has doubled and everything I do, from pulling my frigid clothing on over multiple layers of long underwear, to melting ice for my morning tea, takes ten times the effort it did last week. No matter, I tell myself. Another few days of good effort might be enough to decide this thing. If it can be won by the power of perseverance, I’m golden. I gather up the snares and traps pieces I pulled yesterday, peel myself off of the ground by the hearth, and head out into the biting air beyond the cabin door.
It’s impossible to set my elaborate snares in gloves. By moving my scarf a quarter turn every fifteen minutes and sticking my hands into my armpits when my bare fingers seize up, I manage to keep my face and hands from freezing while I painstakingly reset my snares in new locations. By dusk I have a smaller trapline set up in the woods all around the cabin. It’s much closer to home than my previous trapline, so I’ll burn less calories checking it.
When I send my evening check-in message, though, the reply comes back:
ACKNOWLEDGED. MED CHECK TOMORROW
Damn it, so soon?
If they’re coming tomorrow, I need something in my middle when I step onto that scale. That means I absolutely must find something to eat tonight. I’ve finished off all the intestines and stomachs, but there must be something around here with some calories in it, right?
In the back of the shelter where I kept the gut piles for fishing bait there are still some odds and ends. I’ve got rabbit paws and ears, a squirrel hide I scorched by thawing it too close to the fire, several squirrel tails, and some bones that were too small to crack for their marrow. I throw them all into the pot. Whatever it takes.
As I set the pot onto the cooking rocks, the vibration jiggles the hearthstone and my beautiful wooden ancestor plate falls into the fire. I manage to snatch it up before it gets burned and put it back where it goes.
When the skin on the rabbit ears and feet pulls apart easily and a scum of loose hair is floating on the top of the pot, I know my weird-ass soup is as done as it’s going to get. It’s disgusting, but it’s what I’ve got and my only chance at not getting pulled. I peel the fur off the rabbit feet and suck the boiled skin off the base of the tufts, trying to keep the hair out of my teeth, then chew the tendons and ligaments off of each tiny bone. It’s an incredibly tedious process. The rabbit ears are actually not bad—probably the best part, which isn’t saying much. It takes me an hour to painstakingly eat every morsel of solid food, and more than once I wonder if I’m getting anywhere near the calories from it that I’m burning in the process of eating it. Afterward, I stare into the chalky dregs of “soup” at the bottom of the pot, trying to muster the will to drink them. Maybe if they were a little warmer? As I grab some firewood, my arm brushes the ancestor plate, still sooty from its fall into the fire, and it’s like I’ve been stung by it—like the ancestors screaming in my ears.
What the hell am I doing?
Do I really think the twenty calories left in this pot are going to get me past a med check, when I barely passed the last one and have eaten maybe 800 calories in the several days since then? Of course they aren’t.
And what does it matter anyway, because I said I wouldn’t do this! I fell right into my old pattern. I knew it was right for me to tap, deep down in my very core, yet I kept pushing and pushing. How did I let the striving and self-denial take the lead again in the most critical moment?
But I already have the answer. It was the other sense of knowing. The one that believes I am close to the win. What if that’s also true? What if one more day could mean going home a champion and financially stable for the first time in my life? And then I realize that doesn’t change anything. I already knew that I needed to leave. The ancestors were telling me the same thing when their plate pitched into the fire; I just wasn’t listening. If I stay, I’ll be going against my own values for the sake of money and the arbitrary, manmade concept known as “winning.” Maybe I really am on the brink of being the last person out here, just as my gut sense tells me I am. That doesn’t change what’s right, it just makes my choice more significant. Doing what’s right when there isn’t much at stake is one thing; doing it when we know what we might be sacrificing is quite another, but it’s even more important.
I believe my body could keep on going a while longer, but at what cost? I may well be one of those people who can push themselves right up until their heart stops beating. This last week I’ve known my body was winding down and I’ve had to push it harder to accomplish the most basic tasks. I’m staggering blindly toward a looming cliff edge obscured by mist, and I might not know that I’m close until I take that fatal last step and it’s too late. No more. Here is where it stops.
I throw open the door and toss the foul foot broth outside, scattering the gray liquid across the sparkling snow. There will be no more Starvation Soup, no more new cracks opening up on my withered hands, no more underwear sliding down my hip bones to pool at my knees. Though the thought twists my shrunken stomach up into knots and steals my breath away, my resolve is unshaken. Tomorrow, I’m making the call.
I stay up late, staring into the coals, hardly able to fathom that this is my last night here. I pick up a piece of charcoal and for the first time in weeks, I write the date and day number on my hearth rock. November 19, day seventy-two. Oh my gosh, of course I have to go tomorrow—it’s not just my forty-third birthday, it’s also day seventy-three, a prime number day. Forty-three and seventy-three, that’s two prime numbers. I don’t know where this whole prime number thing came from, but it seems that the magic knew all along this would be my time. My resistance is gone. Now that I fully believe I’m going and that it’s absolutely perfect, I let myself actually think about what leaving means. Amidst all the other thoughts, the one that rises to the top is predictable: The next time the sun sets, I’ll be sitting down to a big birthday dinner.
In the morning, I don’t even consider pulling my traps before calling to tap. I’m not giving myself any opportunity to change my mind or back out. I wake up before first light and stagger out of the cabin into the sharp pre-dawn air, pull out the satellite phone and dial up production. My voice catches, but I clear my throat and take a deep breath.
“This is Woniya,” I tell them. “Please tell the crew not to bother packing up the medical equipment. They won’t be doing a check on me today. They’ll be picking me up.” I pause until I can push down the lump in my quivering throat. “I am officially tapping out.”
70
Leaving Tu Nedhe
This time, I stand out in front of the cabin to meet them. The silence of the wintery landscape is broken by the engine long before I see the helicopter. The rhythmic thudding feels shockingly out of place against the groaning of the lake ice and the wind through the spruce branches. Even though this was my choice, I can still hardly wrap my brain around the fact that this is my last day, and the people in that crazy machine aren’t coming to assess me, but to whisk me away.
As the helicopter settles down and the deep rumble of the rotors pounds in my chest, I let the raw mix of emotions pour through me—excitement and fear, joy and grief—all tumbled on top of one another. For a moment, my primal animal nervous system wrestles for dominance with my modern human sensibilities. I force my feet to remain planted as the urge to run away tugs at my legs.
Eventually, jacketed forms approach me along the snowy path, and even as I let myself feel the longing for human connection for the first time in months, a flood of tears at what I’m leaving behind engulfs me.
There are cameras trained on my face, but there’s no way to staunch my tears, and I don’t want to. I want to feel this, all of it, and I want the world out there to feel it too because as painful as it is, it’s also beautiful.
I’m laughing even as the tears pool in the rabbit furs around my neck, making them clammy against my throat. I try to find words for the joy and the heartbreak, the gratitude and the wonder but, “Hi, everyone,” is all I can manage.
The crew is as stunned as I am that I called them here. There has been zero indication from day one that I would ever leave of my own volition.
“I have loved being here with every fiber of my being,” I explain to Dan, the producer. “And I don’t really want to leave, but my body is done and I’m more and more aware of that.”
I look out over his head to the swaying trees, the craggy rocks, and the flat expanse of ice stretching into the distance beyond them. How can I put into words that which, just like this vista, feels infinite? What has been so primal and visceral and beyond the realm of spoken language?
“I have looked into the void, touched its very rim, and come out whole,” I could tell him.
“I have held hands with my ancestors, heard them whispering in my ear, and over time, become one of them.”
“I have learned what it is to be an animal—to live and die by my skill and my wits and what the land has to offer me—and it is the most real and important thing I have ever done. If you would just leave me, if no one was out there watching, I would probably choose to stay out here and let my flesh become fox and lynx and let my bones melt back into the earth.”
But I know they can’t leave me, and the end of this journey is not mine alone to decide.
Instead, I look into his eyes and put it in terms that are easy to understand. “Today is my birthday,” I say. “And it feels like the most amazing gift I can give myself to go somewhere where I have warmth, and food, and the ability to care for myself.”
Back at the cabin, I pack up everything. Everything. It’s a small helicopter, and there’s a weight limit, but I’m not willing to leave behind a single piece of my life out here. The unused clay I had such plans for, frozen solid and heavy as a boulder; the bundles of willows not yet woven; balls and balls of rabbit rope; baskets of frozen cranberries; charred rounds of spruce and birch—my unfinished burn bowls. No one argues with me. They can all see what it’s costing me to be willing to step into that helicopter, and no one wants to risk me changing my mind and having to wrestle me in.
Last of all is my enormous, overstuffed backpack. They offer to take it for me, but I refuse. I came out here on my own, I lived out here on my own, and I’m going to walk out of here on my own with everything I brought with me—including my intact body.
I feel strong and proud—still shrinking inside at the thought of going, but knowing that whatever other adventures await me, I’ll meet those too with fortitude and strength.
My other gear is in the helicopter, and they’re ushering me toward it. One foot is already on the first step of the ladder when I realize I can’t leave yet, there’s something I haven’t done.
“Wait—I need some time to say goodbye,” I tell them.
I walk over to my dancing spot and face the water—looking out at the island that gave me my frying pan and at the jumble of ice flows where I had the most magnificent evening of my life. I throw my arms out wide.
How can I say goodbye to what has been the most life changing experience I have ever known? How can I just fly away from all of this, from the ancestors, who have been with me every step of the way? It’s too much. Then I realize that I won’t be doing that, because I can almost feel their hands on the small of my back now, supporting me gently. And I know that’s my own hand I’m feeling too, because I have the strength to listen to, believe in, and support myself, and somehow it took this experience to really see that.
“I love you, Tu Nedhe, with all my heart and soul,” I tell the water before me. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I don’t want to leave you, but I have to go. I couldn’t do that without saying goodbye, but it isn’t a real goodbye, because I’ll take you with me wherever I go. You’re part of me now, forever. We are part of each other.”
And it’s true. Every cell in each of our bodies is replaced regularly. After these months of eating from the land, I carry the hares and the spruce tips in the fibers of my muscles and the minerals of the bedrock in my bones. Keeping me alive out here was their gift to me, and now it’s time to offer them my gift in return. They get to experience a new life through me, to travel to far-off places they’ve never dreamed of. Together, we offer a gift to the world—showing how someone coming to the wild from a place of humility, respect, and connection can be nourished in bigger and deeper ways than someone who comes to conquer and take without giving back. That is a message that the world needs desperately.
The rocks are blurry through my tears as I tear myself away and give the pilot a nod. Dave Holder gives me a hand into the cockpit and straps me in. I sob all over again as the rotors start up and I feel the skids leave the rocks for the last time. I gasp and fight the straps and laugh through the tears as we ascend, reaching my hands out toward the barren stretches of granite as we zoom away from my peninsula, my home. I already miss it with a pain that’s like a hot knife in my chest. I love it so much I feel my heart will burst. And yet ultimately, I’ve come to see that I love myself more. And that’s the real win.
Me in my shelter during a medical check. The insulated double wall is visible on right side of the door frame. Photo by Dave Holder, October 2018. Used with permission.
The two fawns from the doe I butchered for my casting submissions, just before I buried them.
The view from the rock arena, looking southeast over the lake toward Frying Pan Island. Photo by Dan Bree, November 2018. Used with permission.
Detail of the back of my folding saw. This is the end with which I tried, unsuccessfully, to beat my way through eighteen inches of lake ice in order to ice fish.
Me and the cameraman, Sean Cable, on November 20, 2018, which was my birthday and the day I tapped out. My shrunken cheeks and protruding nose show my emaciation, but I am thrilled to be holding the thermos of bone broth the team brought me and to have human contact again. Photo by Dan Bree, November 2018. Used with permission.
