There's a cabin out there that I was supposed to camp in this past weekend. Kathryn, Jones and I left Friday afternoon to find it. Three first year grad students, none of us Alaskans (we haven't made it through a winter yet). We piled our 40 pound improvised backpacks into Kathryn's car and hit the road around five. We guesstimated having about four hours of daylight left to drive fifty miles and walk three miles into the cabin. We should have made it just as the sun was going down with time to build a fire in the wood stove. We stopped on the way and bought wine at a gas station, stuffing the bottles into our already busting backpacks. We're practical people.
We hit the trail about 6:30, slightly later than planned. We read the map - two trail possibilities. One went up into the hills and looked much longer. The other, looked like a straight shot to the cabin through the valley. So, we ignored the advice of an email and the signs that said "Winter Only Trail" (we soon found out that actually means "Only When Frozen"), and we took the straight road.
It was easy going for a while, our only concern being that we might run into a moose or a bear. We even thought out loud to each other that we would be at the cabin in no time. And then the first puddles came. They were easily dodged for the most part with minor complaints. Then, suddenly, the little puddles of mud turned into a full-on bog - something resembling the moors out of Wuthering Heights according to Kathryn, or the Dead Marshes of Mordor out of The Lord of the Rings for me. Jones refused to make a literary allusion in her head because it would have made it creepier. (Yes, we're all lit nerds.) Even the ground that looked solid was really a sponge of gush when you stepped there. The only "bright side" we could point out at this point was that there were no snakes or alligators lurking in the swamp. Reptiles aren't fans of Alaska.
Soon, we gave up on keeping our feet dry, and actually started finding it a relief when the mud and water only came up to our ankles instead of our knees. The "trail" would sometimes split, and we would choose to take the side that looked less like mire only to find ourselves sloshing through guck thirty seconds later.
At each split of the trail, I grew more concerned. I looked over my shoulder and saw nothing but bog, not even the trail we'd just come down. But we kept pressing on towards the western sun knowing we couldn't get too lost while the sun was in the sky and we were in a relatively narrow valley after all. One way in, one way out.
So, we stumbled along, nearly twisting our ankles at every step, our backpacks digging into our shoulders. Then, Kathryn got stuck - one leg up to her knee in gooey mud that refused to give her foot back. I tried to pull her out, but I couldn't get good footing in the spongey wasteland and was afraid I'd fall into the pit as well. "Is this really how it's going to end?" she said.
But she somehow pulled herself out using one of the only trees in the entire bog. We trudged on, the sun fading fast. And then the trail completely disappeared. Nothing but bog for as far as we could see. This was the point I thought to myself: We are going to have to spend the night in this swamp. At this point, we deemed it foolish to continue, so we turned around in hopes of finding out way out.
We made it back to the car just as the sun disappeared behind the mountain and we were enveloped in Alaskan darkness. We drove back to my apartment, had a picnic on my living room floor, and drank a bottle of wine a piece, toasting to our escape from the bog.
And that's how I almost got swallowed, quite literally, by the Alaskan wilderness.
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