Arctic Solitaire - Paul Souders

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turds. There were pouches of Indian curry, boxes of Cajun beans and rice, and enough penne pasta to feed half of Sicily.

      I even bought canned bacon. Bacon. In a can. Stuff you wouldn’t eat until the waning hours of the zombie apocalypse.

      Something happens in my brain whenever I start planning a trip like this one. I couldn’t be trusted to tie a bowline knot or change a spark plug; my tool kit and its attendant collection of rusty spare parts were a joke. In the face of so many unknowns, I obsessed over the few tangible things, however meaningless, that I could control. Here, I compulsively gathered, labeled, and alphabetized two dozen miniature Ziploc bags filled with cooking spices.

      I am all about priorities.

      I unearthed layers of polypropylene long underwear that had seen me through one too many cold and mildewy Alaskan summers. But I was traveling alone, so why spend money on replacements? Anything new would smell just as bad by the time I was done with it. Instead, I blew more than a thousand bucks on heavy Gore-Tex bibs and a matching jacket at the Helly Hansen outlet store, then drove back the next day and picked out a one-piece survival drysuit. All of it was as stiff as cardboard and as fashionable as a fireman’s turnout gear. But the labels promised to render me impervious to hurricane winds and monsoon rains—if not from the withering scowls of actual yachtsmen. As a bonus, the survival suit was crimson red, convenient both for hiding bloodstains and improving the odds that a search and rescue team might locate my remains.

      Over the decades, I have accumulated a small mountain of both camera gear and waterproof cases. Without too much regard for how it all fit, I set about cramming one into the other. I wasn’t limiting myself to the usual assortment of cameras and lenses, either. I needed underwater housings and radio triggers for remote camera traps, along with an array of tripods, clamps, cables, and mounts. I bought a first-generation Chinese-built drone, hoping to shoot aerial pictures with both feet planted firmly on solid ground. I made a list of every single thing I might conceivably use on a six-week shoot, then bought two of them. And sometimes a spare.

      The immensity of the expedition weighed heavily on me, and the preparations became a welcome distraction. All through my life, I have been afraid of the wrong things. Collapsing glaciers? All in a day’s work. Large, unpredictable, and pissed-off wildlife? Bring it. Insurmountable credit card debt? No problemo.

      It was grown-up life—with its sober commitments, responsible behavior, and the white-picket fence—that scared me stupid.

      I spent decades of my adult life as if it was one long, college sophomore year. Then, to my considerable surprise, I woke up one day and realized I was about to turn fifty. Suddenly I understood that this would be my last chance to try growing up.

      I had been dating a lovely woman for a few years. Like my mother and grandmother, she was a nurse, though unlike them she had left the operating room and moved into a new career working as a successful medical sales executive. When we began dating, my friends shook their heads and said, “Dude, you are so punching above your weight with this one.” As my semi-centennial approached, the topic of rings came up. Instead of running for the airport, I stuck around, and asked this beautiful woman to be my wife. Janet and I bought a sweet, old house in a quiet Seattle neighborhood. We adopted a dog. Together we began to perfect a normal, happy life together. It was the strangest sort of midlife crisis.

      One evening while we were cooking dinner—well, Janet was cooking while I hacked away at some vegetables—I looked over in amazement and said, “We’re just like normal people.” And that, to me, felt like the purest kind of love. Nobody had to rappel off a mountainside that evening, or wrestle a python, or scuba dive beneath the polar ice cap. We could simply enjoy a home-cooked meal and a glass of wine and sit by the fireplace. It turned out normal was . . . nice.

      And now I had something to lose by charging off with C-Sick. It frightened me in ways I couldn’t even name.

      Reluctant to admit any of this fear directly to my wife, I unloaded on her co-workers instead. My third cocktail into a wedding reception for one of her colleagues, I blabbered to half the table that this was “the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done,” and “the scariest trip I’ve tried.” And “whatever you do, don’t tell Janet.”

      This did surprisingly little to inspire confidence on the home front.

      I did what I could to control the hazards I thought I might encounter. I had once believed that polar bears to be stone cold, blood-thirsty killers, an animal that would track you, hunt you, and skin you alive for the sheer ugly joy of it. The reality I’d seen in earlier forays to Svalbard and Churchill showed the animals in a more realistic light. Still, in fevered dreams I imagined a bear climbing over C-Sick’s white gunwales like one more iceberg and bursting through the cabin doors. Come morning light, there would be nothing left of me but a smear of blood, a pile of smelly long johns, and that damn can of bacon, still untouched.

      All the same, I may have gone a little overboard with the bear protection. I found a tripwire fence that would emit a deafening shotgun-shell blast if a bear stumbled through its perimeter—great if you wanted to try reasoning with a wire-entangled, half-deaf, and fully enraged polar bear. I bought dozens of noisemaker shells and a pen-sized flare launcher, which was like the shittiest gadget from the worst Bond movie ever, a pen that goes “bang” . . . but not very loudly. I could deploy it in case stern looks and strong language failed to dissuade a marauding bear, or if I was set upon by angry marmots. In the end, I also packed last summer’s shotgun, along with its unused case of rifled lead slugs, and two more boxes of twelve-gauge bear bangers.

      In late June, after months of preparation and weeks of buying, sorting, and packing, I finally loaded everything into my aging Volkswagen Touareg SUV. It was a truck created more for divorced dads venturing back into the dating game than for rigorous off-road use, let alone serious transcontinental boat hauling. With C-Sick in tow, my VW looked like a silver ladybug pulling some enormous bathtub toy. But it was already paid for. And it got the job done.

      It was closing time at the local boat shop when I drove down to retrieve C-Sick and pay my exorbitant tab. After releasing her back into my care, the mechanics watched with amusement as I nervously lined up the ball hitch and boat trailer. I attached the trailer and drove off amid muffled sniggering. I hadn’t gone four blocks when, in the middle of traffic, I felt a sickening thud. I looked back to see the boat and trailer lurching skyward. Oh shit . . . I slammed on the brakes and the trailer hitch rammed into my truck, then bounced off, and started to roll downhill until safety chains brought it up short and yanked it back into the Touareg again. The process repeated itself two or three more times before both vehicle and boat trailer ground to a halt in the middle of the street.

      In my haste, I’d failed to properly lock down the hitch. It could have been worse, of course. If I’d forgotten the safety chains, too, C-Sick might have careened back toward the sea in a kind of slow motion, made-for-TV-movie disaster that could have led to serious bodily harm and expensive legal action, and necessitated that I move to some other state—one that began with an I, like Iowa or Indiana or Illinois, a long way from any ocean. I might be stupid, but for once I was lucky. My neighbors, kind folk of humble Norwegian stock, refrained from mocking laughter. Some construction guys stopped their trucks, hopped out, and helped me block the trailer wheels and untangle the mess. One even lent me a shop jack to help pry the trailer’s hitch from beneath the undercarriage. Except for my embarrassment, the only real damage done was a shallow impact crater on the VW’s hatchback.

      I drove the rest of the way home feeling rattled. This was going to be a long trip.

      I packed the boat and stuffed the Touareg with all of my supplies. I made an agonizing seventeen-point U-turn to maneuver the VW and boat trailer on our narrow street: back and forth, back and forth. I blocked traffic for what felt like a week, burning with shame, until I was finally facing the correct direction. I pulled to the side of the street and nearly ran over a neighbor’s cat, then held Janet in my arms.

      “I’ll call when I get there,” I sniffed, my eyes brimming. We had been doing this dance for years now. I always milked these departures for every ounce of drama. Janet, the trained healthcare professional,

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