It was 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and multihued auroras rippled across the night sky. Below these turbulent curtains of light, the world was utterly frozen and silent and grey-blue, a landscape of ice. I entertained the notion that I was somehow on another world, some moon of Jupiter maybe. I pulled my facemask down and inhaled. My mouth, throat, and lungs felt like they were catching fire in the freeze-dried air. If I left my skin exposed to this for more than a minute I risked frostbite, necrosis, gangrene.
When the auroras settled down, the Milky Way blazed. The galactic plane was so bright I could discern the black silhouettes of interstellar nebulae. The sky looked like a Hubble photograph.
I was on American soil, but closer to Tokyo than New York, 250 miles from the continental road system that ends at Anchorage, Alaska. The nearest people—a couple of winter caretakers like me—were about 30 miles away over virginal, roadless terrain. I was on the banks of a frozen river that seemed miles wide: a surreal wasteland of ice beneath the stars, hummocks and spires and bergs of ice, vast plains of ice knives, and pressure ridges, miniature Himalayas where Asias and Indias of ice had clashed. The ice was thick now, between 4 and 8 feet. A semi could theoretically drive on it. I had seen no open water, no tidal overflow. Not like back in December and January. Those had been the days of my close calls. I remembered my brush with death, a flirtation with open water on my snowmachine.
But now I had a different problem: I’d blown the drive belt.
I had a spare, and a vague recollection of how to change it. I’d read about it in a manual and done it once myself for practice. That had been in September, in damp 40-degree weather that now seemed balmy. Tonight, in late February, I was on Mars. And to change the belt I needed my gloves off.
I had become a student of Entropy these past months. The Second Law of Thermodynamics concerns the dissipation of heat, and the increasing disorder of any closed system. The universe is such a system. If it continues expanding forever, it will undergo ‘heat death,’ a misleading term for a prolonged, frigid, cosmic endgame. The last star will eventually die. Self-replicating molecules like DNA will run out of fuel.
That night in February of 2004, Entropy dictated my course of action: exploit the quickly dying heat of my snowmachine engine.
I kept my bundled hands underneath the cowl. As the engine cooled I removed my outer shell of wool mitten, then Gor-tex gloves, and finally thin fleece under-gloves. I worked quickly on the lukewarm engine: Step one was to remove the pieces of the exploded belt, which had found their way into many nooks and crannies I didn’t understand. I was lucky the belt hadn’t ground the crankshaft seal and killed the engine. Still, much of the belt had gotten itself wrapped up in the primary clutch. I had to take a knife to it, hoping I wouldn’t damage the clutch itself.
Every action I took was fraught with unknowns. For instance, steel can snap like dry wood at minus 40 or below. My knife could go at any second. So could any number of snowmachine parts—like the skis or handlebars—if I got it moving again.
I had a narrow window of opportunity here: When the metal had cooled beyond a certain point, it was capable of stripping the flesh off my hands. I could run the engine without the belt on, but I wasn’t sure what that would do to it. I often had trouble starting it under minus 40 degrees.
A winter caretaker with wanderlust should possess a high degree of mechanical knowledge, especially in Alaska. I was a bungling novice.
I examined pieces of the old belt. The lugs were worn flat in places, and the edges of the belt had frayed. I should have checked the belt and changed it out long before now. I wondered if my stupidity would mean death tonight. I had plenty of gasoline, but not much convenient campfire fuel here at 59 degrees latitude. When the ice and snow didn’t cover everything, there was marshy tundra with isolated clusters of dwarfed trees. I was about 50 miles from a bay that opened into the Bering Sea.
I was bundled against Entropy like an astronaut: polypropylene long underwear suit, then layers of fleece and wool and Gor-Tex. My outer shell was a Walls “Blizzard Pruf” snowsuit, nylon stuffed with polyester insulation, all black with large pouch-like pockets—my arctic ninja suit. It had cost me 20 dollars at a thrift store in Anchorage. Two layers of hood—fleece and Gor-Tex—enclosed my all-important skull. Over these clung a Russian-style muskrat pelt hat with ear flaps, a neoprene facemask, and tinted snow-machine goggles. My feet, in addition to their layers of wool and fleece, were housed in U.S. Army Extreme Cold Vapor Barrier Boots, or ‘Bunny Boots.’ Alaskans swear by these white, bulky rubber boots with their inch of wool and felt insulation. They aren’t waterproof, as I’d discovered in December, but they certainly retained heat.
Despite all of this, I was shivering.
I didn’t want to think about the wind-chill factor once I got machining again. I could achieve 70 mph on the flatter regions of the River, on the clear, smooth highways of black ice. In weather like this it became a mathematical dilemma: speed up to get back to my cabin and out of the cold, but grow painfully colder as I accelerate. There had to be an optimal speed for a given ambient temperature, but I’d never found one. And yet I craved that game now.
If the machine was dead, I was in trouble. I had a day’s worth of food: a small brick of chili and an energy bar. My water thermos was three-fourths empty, stored Eskimo-style against my bare stomach. I had a trigger-start propane torch, chemical heating pads, a white LED headlamp, a pump-action shotgun, an axe, cooking kit, knives, first aid kit, the snowmachine’s tool kit, a Leatherman, a backpack, and spare spark plugs. But I would have to hike 30 miles over difficult terrain. I had a detailed map of the winding River, so eventually I’d be tempted to shortcut over a bend. That mistake had gotten me lost on the tundra once, on foot before snowmachine season. It had been getting dark. I’d consulted my Eddie Bauer keychain compass frantically under my headlamp. Whether the compass was a piece of shit, or my proximity to magnetic north played havoc with it, I don’t know, but mere luck brought me back to the River. Back in error-prone November.
If I had to walk now, it meant a game similar to the wind-chill game: The harder I pushed myself, the more I’d sweat. That meant freezing when I rested. But of course, the slower I went, the longer I was out in 50 degrees below zero.
Pining for the wind-chill game, I fought the cold-stiffened spare belt onto the clutches. These metal pulleys were getting painfully cold. I donned the first two layers of gloves and kept working. The snowmachine was old, a Tundra 2 Skidoo. Ignition required a vigorous rip-start, a violent full-body contortion I’d grown adept at. The machine had breaks but no reverse. It was not designed for inexperienced pioneers, let alone newcomers to Alaska—and no machine is really designed for belt work at 50 below. When I finally got the belt installed, my hands had become numb, useless claws. It was time to rip-start. The machine had failed to start in temperatures warmer than this, in broad daylight.
I was frightened.
It took five shoulder-wrenching pulls to get the engine limbered up and turning over. My right claw hooked the rip handle, but couldn’t really grasp. Several times I lost my grip in mid-yank and tumbled backwards off the machine.
‘Now we come to it,’ I thought. ‘Stranded in the Bush, my body malfunctioning. When you stop shivering, that’s the beginning of the end. Then you’ll start to feel warm, euphoric. Death will be peaceful, anyway.’ How did it come to this? I was in a fucking Jack London story—’To Start a Snowmachine.’ Me. A video game playing hack writer from Florida. The thought of my small, stinking cabin forty miles away, with its diesel stove and Honda generator, filled me with pathetic longing.
Six months ago in Anchorage, I’d been a different person.
Tags: Alaska, arctic, aurora borealis, author, cold, creative nonfiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction, nature, nonfiction, Northern Lights, snowmachine, snowmachines, snowmobile, snowmobiles, survival, wilderness, winter caretaker, writer, writing
