Right out of the catalog

Have you ever flipped through the pages of an REI catalog and thought, “I bet those models have never even put on a backpack before”? Have you looked at their crisp, colorful clothing and realized that you look nothing like that when you’re in the backcountry? Well, it turns out you are right. Last week I monitored a photo shoot for a major outdoor clothing manufacturer and—I kid you not—as we were walking down the trail to Grand View Point, I overheard one model muse in an airy voice, “I’ve never worn hiking boots before; they are really supportive.”

Anyone who’s seen a John Wayne movie will recognize Canyon Country on the big screen. After the area was discovered by Hollywood, the film crews descended in droves, shooting everything from car commercials to Indiana Jones. Naturally, local landowners saw dollar signs in their eyes, and began charging productions a small fortune to tromp all over their land. Always looking to save a dime, the Hollywood folks looked around and realized that just down the road was a national park, which would let all taxpaying citizens with a camera—even fancy ones—tromp around for nearly nothing. And tromp they did, with their cameras and tracks and dollies and hoods and grips and hundreds of pairs of boots. Eventually, the NPS realized these crews were getting a bargain by filming in the park, and also getting away with tremendous resource damage, so they instituted a more rigorous system for keeping things under control. As part of that system, every film crew agrees to abide by the same regulations to protect the park which are imposed upon all visitors, and additionally have to be monitored by a park employee throughout the shoot. For me, that meant I spent two days reminding the crew to stay on trail and “don’t bust the crust.”

Not that this was a terrible job, mind you. First, I spent a beautiful day outside, from sunrise to sunset, in places photographers dream about shooting in that perfect light. I was paid overtime to stand around and look rangerly, hanging out with fun and creative people who weren’t trying to get away with anything and sincerely wanted to follow the rules. (After all, it would look bad to have a photo in your sportswear catalog showing someone drilling an anchor in the side of Delicate Arch.) And let’s not forget that while they may not have been chosen for their intimate knowledge of the equipment, these models were hired for a very particular reason: because they made those hiking boots look sooooo good! When those brawny models had to swap out a running shirt for a hiking top between takes, I felt it my particular duty to pay close attention to ensure they did not accidentally step off the trail and crunch the crust. It was rough work, but I was diligent—all for the sake of those little, helpless microbes, of course.

To be fair, my job was considerably easier than the work the crew was doing. By the time I met them at the trailhead, a half hour before sunrise, they’d already gone through clothing and makeup to prep for the day. They drove an SUV with a clothing rack hung across the backseat, each outfit sorted according to cue cards which coordinated this top with those pants and these hats, shoes, backpacks, and water bottles. The stylist and makeup artist ran that part of the operation, ensuring everyone had the right clothing, the right models were paired together, and that all the shirts were smooth and zippers were zipped. She seemed very casual throughout the day, rarely fussing with hair or makeup, but she had a critical job. Even the most riveting photo couldn’t be used if the model were sporting a hat from the winter collection with a vest from the spring line.

Perhaps most surprising to me about the operation was that the clothing sent from the company was a sample pack, produced in advance of the product release and therefore somewhat, shall we say, limited. Today’s selection seemed fairly intact, but the crew told me horror stories of sample clothing shipped in the past which hadn’t been stitched on one side or sported gaping holes in the very front. The deadlines are tight, so the crew doesn’t have time to request replacements. One set still had “SAMPLE” written in bold, black letters across the back of every piece, which demanded some creative camerawork, as well as hours of editing in post-production to clean up the clothing.

The clothes were also one-size-fits-all, or rather, “you’d better select a model who will fit the clothes we’ve provided for you.” Which would be fine if all the clothes were the same size or, in this particular case, if the clothes size coordinated with the shoe size. One of the broad-shouldered, six-foot-tall male models was stuck with shoes which ran 1 ½ to 2 ½ sizes too small. Because ill-fitting clothing shows up on film more noticeably than tight footwear, the photographer must chose a model who fits the clothes, not the disproportionately small shoes. Thus, that shadow of pain in the eyes of the marathon runner in your catalog might be more authentic than you think. Our running-wear model spent two days running trails in shoes two sizes two small. He trimmed his toenails to nubs during the first day, and on the second he showed up with duct tape binding his feet in place. When he pulled that off at the end of the day, well, let’s just say he didn’t have to worry about his toenails anymore.

The women models, of course, had the opposite problem. The petite blonde, exotically called Charumata, couldn’t fill out any of the sportswear, a problem handily remedied in the field by oversized binder clips. In talking to other film monitors, they said they’ve often seen entire outfits pinned onto the model in the field. I wondered how many of those ensembles were pinned into place, and then the models were instructed to jog down the trail. Awkward… In general, I loved listening to the directions from the photographers. Their most common admonition was reminding the models to look like they were having fun. “Smile, laugh, look at each other and talk…. Pretend like you’re talking to each other.” They also choreographed the most minute details: hold the backpack strap with your right hand. Put your right foot down exactly in the center of this puddle. Walk four steps, put down your pack, take off your shell, and then fling your pack back up over your right shoulder. Next time I take a hike, I’m going to work on planning my water breaks so that I’m positioned “just so” in that beam of sunshine in front of a shadowy rock outcropping. I will then take off my jacket, stroking the fleecy-soft liner with the back of my palm, and then pull my water bottle out of my pack with about one-third of the insignia showing beneath my palm. Perhaps that will counteract out the red-faced, spiky-haired, dingy-fleece look I’ve developed during my backpacking trips.

Though I mock the inauthentic crafting of the national park experience I observed during the photo shoot, I have to admit that my favorite moments were when I saw genuine emotion play out on the faces of the models, perhaps while standing at Grand View Point for the first time in their shiny new hiking boots. I watched them play in the wind, heard them shriek in delight when they discovered Sanddune Arch, and saw them sneak out their own cameras to snap a photo of a stunning sunset. Park Rangers work so hard to craft an inspiring visitor experience, which means we often find ourselves out front, leading the way, and directing people to look just there. As a monitor, my job was simply to sit back and observe. I got to witness again how powerful the landscape is at evoking emotion, even (especially!) without my interpretation. To be fair, what I do as a ranger is not so different from what these photographers were doing, setting up a scene where strange and beautiful landscapes become accessible and familiar, places where people can go, and walk, and hike, and jog, and try out their fancy new gear. While Jared and Charumata may never have worn a pack and boots before, for a couple days they wriggled into a pair of (small and uncomfortable) boots and hit the trail—and had an authentic interaction with this inspiring place. As I heard them making plans to return for longer vacations with friends or family, I recognized the power of our parks to stir in even the most naïve observers that inexplicable appreciation for strange and wild places. Who knows? Maybe the next time that model comes to Canyonlands, she’ll be raving to her colleagues about the great new pair of hiking boots she wore during her camping trip last summer. (Though I’m willing to bet she won’t purchase the boots she was modeling—too many blister scars!)

Reporting for duty

Before Park Rangers were invented, the US army administered our National Parks. Actually, in the very beginning, Congress thought the parks would take care of themselves, so they drew some lines on the map and told everyone they couldn’t build their houses there. The first superintendents were volunteers with no administrative budgets. (I’m now unsuccessfully biting back a politically-charged aside about how today’s Congress seems to think the parks should get back to the good ol’ days…) But, it turns that places with herds of wild bison and wide open spaces where no one would notice if you built a little cabin attracted an unseemly lot of trophy hunters and beaver trappers along with the casual tourist. Eventually, someone in Washington realized that park visitors couldn’t entirely be trusted to act in the best interests of preservation, and called upon the military to lend the superintendent some muscle. A temporary assignment of the US Calvary lasted more than thirty years, until the National Park Service was created in 1916. (Avoiding another political statement about military occupation…)

Today, the Park Service’s military legacy shines through in key ways. First and most noticeably, we owe them our uniform. We can thank the army for scratchy polyester dress pants, skull-squeezing flat hats, and footwear which requires us to spit and shine after every guided walk. Perhaps because our uniform smacks of soldiery, people often ask rangers whether they get transferred from park to park, as if on assignment. Officially, the answer is no, but another legacy, cultivated by our position within the executive branch of government and sustained by the free-spirited souls who wander into these careers in the first place, is the NPS culture of relocation and reassignment. A career park ranger will typically work in dozens of parks and monuments, from a handful of seasonal gigs, to that obscure historic homestead where you grab your first permanent assignment, until someday you land a job at that big flagship park, working behind a desk and dreaming about the days when you were footloose and seasonal. The superintendent’s ability to move people from park to park is limited, but most people find that the best way to advance to higher pay and jobs with health insurance is to pack those bags and go after it.

I can’t blame all my rootless wanderings on the Park Service and its army roots, but for the last ten years it has certainly contributed to the problem. And problem it is indeed. Last month, when I crossed the threshold of my new home in Canyonlands, I began my 43^rd move since I first went away to college. (For the record, I’m defining a “move” as relocating myself and a good portion of my belongings to place where I resided for at least six weeks. Thus, a month of backpacking in Europe does not count, but a six-week winter in Yellowstone does.) Now, I’d welcome comparisons from any of you lifetime military sorts, but I’m willing to wager that 43 moves in 15 years will rival just about any army career.

Thanks to the Park Service, I have mastered the art of moving. I have become proficient at packing my possessions into a Geo Metro or onto a snowmobile tow-sled. I know exactly how long it takes to drive from Albuquerque to West Yellowstone, and who will give me a bed to sleep in along the way. I have cleaned dozens of refrigerators and scrubbed a thousand aluminum slats on hundreds of mini-blinds. In all this moving, however, I’ve never acquired that essential flair for cutting all ties and disappearing into the wind. Problem is, I deeply value the people I know in these places. I am so lucky to have wonderful friends in each of my several hometowns, but moving every few months is deadly to human relationships. When all my friends quit making plans with me for more than a week in advance, I realized that perhaps my social calendar, my back muscles, and my emotional stability would benefit from spending an entire year without packing a box.

And so, after 15 years of darting north and south like a spastic and confused snowbird, the park service offered me the golden apple of a “permanent” job, and I find myself gathering boxes from my parents’ basement, plastic dishes from my disposable Yellowstone household, and clothes and furniture from my Albuquerque home, into a single location where I could potentially (though far from certainly) stay for more than three months. Gasp! 

I believe the number one reason people take permanent jobs with the government is so the feds will foot the bill for a team of professional movers to pack, load, transport, and even unpack their worldly goods. As I was packing last weekend in New Mexico, I cheered myself to think that if I choose a career with the Park Service, the next time I pack a box I’ll be carrying it to the retirement home. Fortunately, I had a hearty team of volunteer movers—loads more fun and far better looking than a contract crew—who pitched in generously to help me finagle everything “just so” until we had crammed every nook and cranny with bookshelves, office chairs, and Tupperware. We strapped an animal-print futon mattress to the top, lashed it down, and I was ready to roll. I felt like I’d escaped from a Hollywood film set as I rolled down the interstate, pots and pans clanking and mattress flapping on a top-heavy, oversized moving wagon rocking in the wind.

Nothing’s settled here in Canyonlands, including my own living quarters, but for the first time in a long time there are no dates on my calendar circled in red to mark my next moving day. Like those early solders coming to the nation’s first park to do some quick clean-up work, I cannot see the end of my duty station here. When I start building five-story brick houses and hauling in topsoil to build a parade ground, someone please remind me to put in for a transfer.

The End of the Highway

When I look out the front window of my house in Canylonlands, I feel a little guilty. I feel guilty because the view from my porch is the kind of view you should have to earn by trudging a dozen miles uphill in the blazing heat. When you climb a mountain, you put your sweat into the climb, trading energy and willpower for the chance to see the world from a completely new perspective. After thousands and thousands of steps, you reach that place where you can’t step any higher, and then you look around. When you’re standing up there, looking down at the blanket of tree-tops and semi-trucks the size of matchbooks, you can tell yourself that you’ve earned that view, that you worked for that rare moment when the light would be right and the clouds would be just so, and the world would be clear and perfect.

That is the view I see from my front window. Every morning, when I drag myself out of bed and stumble into the kitchen, I see The View. And every morning, for just a moment, it takes my breath away. But then I realize that I’ve done nothing to earn that view and the teensiest feeling of guilt creeps in. By walking just a dozen steps in my slippers, I can watch the sun rise over red rock and pink buttes and blue mountains layered up as far as the eye can see. I can go for a run from my front door, and in less than a mile sit down and dangle my sneakers over the lip of a 500-foot cliff, which terraces down to another 500-foot cliff, and then another below that, and another and another, until they reach the unseen river in the deepest gorge. My commute has no smog, no traffic, just a quiet five-minute walk as I wait for the sun to crest the La Sal mountains, casting the warm morning light upon mesas still capped with snow.

Of course, there are more substantial things than easy sunsets to feel guilty about when you are living on the Island in the Sky. For instance, not only are we living in a desert where less than ten inches of rain falls each year, but up here on the canyon rims we cannot drill for water to drink and bathe, so we truck it in. Every few days the water truck drives thirty miles to stock our water tank with twice-chlorinated H2O. If that  doesn’t convince you that no one should be living here, consider this: the BLM land outside the park is biannually allocated for cattle grazing. The cows have the same problem we do: no water. So, the ranchers also tank up their trucks and haul water thirty miles to the mesa top so the cattle can have some vital water to wash down those dry native grasses. Clearly, none of us should really be here.

Or, you might feel guilty because you live in this beautiful landscape, a once-in-a-lifetime destination for millions of visitors from around the world, and yet you’re endlessly annoyed because your cell phone doesn’t work. Begrudgingly, after searching for a way to get mobile broadband, high-speed Internet, or one of those fancy all-in-one gadgets, I called up the phone company to beg for a “land line” in my wilderness home. For the price you pay for your cell phone/mobile hotspot/camera/GPS/heart-rate-monitor communication device, I can get a DSL connection which runs at the whopping speed of 3 mbps. At that rate, I can watch a three-minute YouTube video in just under eight minutes! Imagine the guilt I felt when a seasonal ranger who’d worked here from 1965-67, the first three summers after the park was established, told me how he’d commuted to work every day along a twenty-five mile unimproved dirt “road.” There was no housing up here at the time, so they made the commute every day. Three miles from the main road, where today’s Highway 313 takes a series of switchbacks down to the canyon floor, the old road dropped sharply into the bottom of the wash. This steep trail was continuously and unexpectedly being washed out, so when they got off work and headed home for the night, they would often drive 18 miles down 313, only to discover that the road had crumbled over night. At this point they could either get out their shovels get to work, or turn around and go rough it at the Island for the night, only to come back and dig out the road in the morning.Today, thanks to my 3 mbps Internet connection, I can order my groceries, my shampoo, "Lost: The complete series," and a new sofa from Amazon, and the UPS driver will drive his air conditioned van down the paved highway to drop those packages off on my doorstep.

When they told me my delivery address here I laughed aloud, anticipating the very worst for living at "End of Highway 313, Moab, Utah." But each night as I sit on the blanket in the middle of my empty living room, watching the sunset out my front window, I am humbled by the chance to be here, for the possibilities of a great new job, and to have a huge apartment, clean and freshly-painted, waiting for me when I arrived. When I think of what it would take to make it here on my own, without the conveniences of the modern-day Park Service, I am amazed that for this little while I have to opportunity to live at the end of the highway.

A snowy day in Canyonlands. My outdoor dining room, come warmer days.

Leaving and Learning

A few weeks ago, I was standing near one of our law enforcement rangers outside the West Thumb Warming Hut when a visitor disembarked from an in-bound snowcoach, ogling up and down and all around as she crossed the snowy parking lot. “You must feel like this park really belongs to you,” she said to my colleague as she approached. He smiled, “Officially, while I’m wearing this uniform, I will tell you that this park belongs to everyone and I’m just here to watch over it.” Then, leaning in conspiratorially, “But in truth, when everyone leaves the park at night and it’s so quiet and I’m out on the trail all by myself, I do feel like this park is mine and mine alone.”

These words crept back to me last week as I loaded my snowmobile to drive away from the place which has been my part-time home for nearly ten years. In July, when you walk the boardwalks elbow-to-elbow with the American masses, Yellowstone is in every way the nation’s park; but in the wintertime, when not a single vehicle tracks up the Grand Loop road between dusk and dawn, it is easy to mark your territory, claiming the first ski on last night’s snowfall or a private eruption of Old Faithful by moonlight. As with so many things in life, I didn’t realize how much Yellowstone was in my blood until I started my new job here at Canyonlands. I may have to strap an elastic band around my wrist and snap myself every time I mention “the mother park,” for it seems I just can’t stop talking about Yellowstone.

As wrenching as it is to leave a place you love, there is nothing like the process of saying good-bye to polish it up all nice and shiny for your memories. My last week in Yellowstone was crammed with the best the park has to offer, from cozy evenings with friends, to moonlight skis and snowmobile rides, warm conversations around the wood stove, frosty morning walks in the geyser basin and top-notch skiing on favorite trails. Those days of saying goodbye to friends—with hugs and goodies, promises to visit and dreams of returning—solidified my deep gratitude for associations forged during the last four winters, particularly with the guides who have brightened so many of my days with smiles, one-handed waves, pockets full of candy, plenty of wise-cracks, and the unspoken acknowledgment of our shared quest to discover the every-day spectacular of Yellowstone.

Camping out with my coworkers in a historic cabin-turned-warming hut reminded me how fortunate I am to work for an agency where colleagues are friends and the workplace is steeped with adventure and opportunity. My time with this intrepid trio of women was far too short, and I sincerely hope our association will continue in the NPS and beyond. And on my last day in Yellowstone, as I took that final ski up to the Continental Divide and then down the Spring Creek Trail, I realized that if I had one day left on this planet and by some good grace it was in the wintertime, I would choose to spend that day skiing this very trail on a sunny but not-too-warm winter day, topping it off with a Caldera Cake at Old Faithful (hey, if it were my last day, I’d probably eat two or three!) After such a week, my heart was as heavy as the wet, sloshy snow which fell during my last Yellowstone night, but also brimming with sincere appreciation for the privilege of being a small part of something so tremendous and challenging and inspiring as a Yellowstone winter. I have met new versions of myself through my experiences here, and I can only hope my work here has contributed positively to the place which so many others claim as theirs and theirs alone.

After my first winter at Canyon, I scribbled down a list of “Lessons Learned in Winter.” I stumbled upon my notes the other day while I was packing up, and it seems appropriate to share parts of that list now, as I embark on a journey which is bound bring its own set of harried lessons. There are certainly otherslessons I would add today, but to preserve the innocence of those first four months, I will stick to the original list:

Lessons Learned from a Yellowstone Winter:

*Do not fear the snow. (I’m sure that was penned with you in mind, Jen!) After a week in the park I quit kicking the snow off my boots when I came into the house. The snow melts and evaporates away in moments, adding precious humidity to the room and leaving no trace on the carpet. I vacuumed only once during my first winter, for snow doesn’t track like dirt. Besides, it’s going to snow almost every day, so the sooner you accept that, the less time you will spend worrying about it.

*Get a job where you can wear sweats to work. Knowing that you have your fleece pajamas on under your snowmobile bibs will always bring that secret smile to your face.

*The weather forecast will never be accurate. Plan for every possibility and quit worrying about it. Even if it snows a foot, you'll still be able to get there on a snowmobile.

*Cook with what you've got, even red delicious apples. Fresh fruit is rare as gold during the wintertime, and apples snubbed by snowmobilers are a welcome supplement to a diet of packaged foods with six-month shelf lives. While I might prefer a Fuji or Jonagold, an apple means so much more in Yellowstone’s Interior, and homemade applesauce will forever be a favorite food because it reminds me that friends are looking out for me and doing simple things to make my life a little better.

*Go to bed early.  When the sun sets at 4:30 and you have no television, no internet, and few social obligations, sleep creeps in early. And after a day spent shivering in sub-zero temperatures, your tired body can take nine…ten…eleven hours to recuperate.

*Dance with your skis on.  Topping my list of favorite Yellowstone moments is a dance during the Snow Lodge Winter Olympics. In 2008, the hotel company brought in a live band to perform for employees in the Old Faithful pub. Erika and I seized a rare chance to enjoy live music and snowmobiled over for the show. Halfway through the evening, cues were exchanged between the veteran employees who mysteriously snuck out the front door. Moments later, they came clacking in on their skis, stomping in rhythm with the music and pulsing the floor with the most wonderful, vibrant percussion. Those without skis played hop-scotch over their tips and tails in a frenzied ski-dance, a Snow Lodge tradition, unique to a life lived on skis. When I snap my skis on outside my front door, skiing to work, to play, to exercise, to socialize, to take the garbage out, I think of that night dancing in the pub with my skis on, shouting to the world, “This is what it means to live in Yellowstone!”

 Here, we dance with our skis on.

Yellowstone Ravens Addicted to Diet Coke

It is no secret that I have a few Yellowstone Tourist pet peeves. Yes, I hate it when you toss your chewing gum under the boardwalk. I can’t believe you claim at the gate that you don’t need a map and then show up at Fishing Bridge wondering how you missed the road to Old Faithful. This morning, I rode with clenched jaws because I could see the tracks of a snowmobiler who was hot-dogging it all over the road, as if he were driving a bumper car in Disneyland, not a $10,000 machine in the world’s first national park.

It is also no secret that I despise the vending machines in the Fishing Bridge Warming Hut, and not just because I listen to their electric whine for several hours a day. Here I sit, between walls constructed from lodgepole pines which were placed here in a time when less than a thousand people visited Yellowstone every year. People enter the hut, chilled from traveling through the hushed winter landscape, seeing more bison and coyotes than people and vehicles, to be greeted by a cozy fire, a friendly ranger, and a neon banner for corporate America. No person spending eight hours in sub-zero temperatures truly NEEDS a cold soda. Dehydration and hypothermia aside, is there a better time to try out good nutrition than on a day when you are getting all this fresh air and exercise, and experiencing something you’ve never tried before? Not to mention that all that liquid and caffeine is going straight to your bladder and will lead to one very uncomfortable snowmobile ride. And then there’s the simple truth that electronics can be quite fussy in freezing temperatures, and more often than not you aren’t going to be able to get the treat you want out of the machine at all. I watched someone the other day key in every number on the touch pad—A1… A2…, A3…--until the very last slot finally coughed up a package of Juicy Fruit. When the machines don’t work, people get cranky with me, though I know nothing about how to help out (they are operated by the hotel company, who sends an employee over every Saturday to stock the machines). I spend much of that conversation discouraging people from shaking the machine until it spits out the Doritos which are dangling from E3.

But the very worst problem is that most people can’t drink 16 ounces of sugar-water during a twenty-minute rest stop at Fishing Bridge, so they savor the soda for a few moments and then leave 2/3 of the can for me to deal with. Actually, I wish they would just hand their unsipped sodas directly to me, and I would gladly walk over to the outhouse and drain the liquid down the vault, crush the can, and send it to recycling. That is the cleanest, most legal way to deal with the unwanted beverage. But in this case, they never ask the ranger. Instead, they might decide to toss the can into the recycling bin, soda and all. When I pulled the plastic liner from the bin to empty the recycling a few days ago, the bottom of the sack was weighed down by a gallon of “suicide” soda (remember when you used to go through the buffet line and empty one shot of every kind of soda from the machine into your glass? Mmm….) After double and triple bagging the whole thing, I bungeed it onto my snowmobile, and drove at 5 mph to the recycling receptacles in the housing area. I pulled on thin latex gloves and sorted every aluminum can and plastic bottle, until my hands were frozen and I was left with a plastic bag of flat soda.

But I would gladly sort through hundreds of sticky soda cans if it would keep people from making the very bad decision to dump their Diet Coke outside. Now I get that winter is an awkward time and the proper and polite solution of pouring your beverage in the toilet may not be obvious to civilized folks. And I get that when you pour that soda into the snow it truly seems to disappear into four feet of powder. In reality, however, pouring a can of soda into a snowbank is rather like pouring syrup on a snow cone or cola flavoring into a Slurpee machine: the liquid doesn’t disappear, it freezes, making sugar/saccharin ice cubes all around the warming hut. In the evening, when I’m not here to chase them away, the ravens swoop down and dig out these tasty bits of high fructose corn syrup for dinner.

Now, I’m no biologist, but I’m willing to wager that the last thing a bird which sleeps outside when it is ten degrees below zero needs to eat is a Slurpee. Beyond the issue of cold, that bird likely feels the sensation of being satiated—the same reason we drink Diet Coke when we’re counting calories—without actually receiving any caloric benefit. To survive the winter, the non-hibernating species in Yellowstone need to continuously ingest food dense with calories, fueling their efforts to stay warm. After all the talk we’ve heard about the empty calories of corn syrup, it is difficult to imagine what might happen to a bird accustomed to foraging off bison carcasses when it develops a taste for Coca-Cola. But can you blame it? We know that soda is bad for us, but can’t resist swinging by the drive-thru on the way home from work because it’s easier than cooking dinner. Given the option of free handouts at the warming hut or hunting for mice or bison, I’d certainly be tempted by the sugary stuff. And just like us, they’ll probably have no idea what it is doing to them until it is too late.

So every night as I pack up my snowmobile and pull away from the warming hut, I look up at the pair of black birds roosting just above the outhouse. I know they have their eye on the unguarded snow shack, ready to swoop in for a snow cone as soon as my back is turned. I try to resist personifying these intelligent birds, but part of me can’t help but imagine what goes on at the warming hut in the evenings as five-pound ravens get hopped up on Diet Coke. Do they get a little jittery and fly in frantic circles? Does it stimulate their productivity, helping them rip backpacks off snowmobiles with undiscovered strength? With a full belly and a caffeine buzz, who knows what a raven might be capable of? It’s likely my imagination, but as I glance up in the trees I’m certain I see a look so familiar to me after 10 years of graduate school: that crazed, wide-eyed expression which screams, “You’d better get out of my way, lady, because I haven’t had my caffeine today.”