This I would not have.
I awoke a couple of hours ago, at 5 am with a headache, nausea, and vomiting up any water that I took in.
It’s sub-zero degrees and we are in a tent in the Swedish sub-arctic. Location: Grövelsjön Wilderness on the border of Sweden and Norway. It’s Day 3 of our outing, and it’s New Year’s Day.
For two active days, I’ve had no problems, and we’ve had a laughter-filled, loving good times out here, with long deep sleep, after ski-hauling a sled on Day 1, and hiking to the summit of Storvätteshågna (1204m/3950ft) on Day 2.
And consuming, what I thought was plenty of water and hot drinks, and camp food. The only relatively new challenge for me is the extreme cold, single-digit Farenheit and below, and it seems I messed up my hydration. The body is in overdrive in extreme temperatures and one can screw things up, and it seems I have. Thirst and dehydration are not necessarily indicative of each other.
“How do I assess this situation, Mikael?” he asks himself.
He hands me a fiber biscuit and I sip water and nibble cautiously. Up they all come immediately. We do this over and over, each time after vomiting, I fall over onto a pile of bags and instantly sleep.
Emerging from my misery, I say “We gotta get the hell out of here. Can I just ski ahead of you and you haul everything?”
“Of course, this is a 5th of the weight of Greenland. No worries.” (Mikael just pulled a sled across Greenland last August) “You’re tough, but I only worry if you faint. Don’t sit down.”
We work out our plan as he launches dry bags out the tent door and starts digging out the arctic tent from underneath its piles of snow and ski gear.
I managed to pull on my ice-cold leather ski boots and emerge in an enormous parka and down jumpsuit, these weren’t heat-effective ski clothes, more like a space suit. I walked a few steps toward the skis he set out for me, and I bowed over vomiting again, this time yellow bile searing holes into the pure white snow.
“Love, this might be one of the hardest afternoons of your life, but you are tough. Now you see the way,” he says pointing to the red crosses dotting the way across the vast rolling hills of snowy rock.
The weakness had my mind magnifying the experience. What was beautiful to a stronger version of me, now felt emotionally significant to the weaker version that has ended up powering us both. My breathing, the frozen moisture on my nose, the whip of the wind that made my skin hard and tingly, were sensations that offered distinction atop the sputtering engine of my very humbled being. Visceral gratitude, or something like that.
Now, I’ll tell you I watched a movie as I very slowly ski climbed up this long hill. One weak ski slid in front of the other while I watched the movie on the screen of my imagination. The film I played: Me Being Done, and it went like this…
Walking through the Grövelsjön Station door, like a black marshmallow mad woman, clomping over to the beverage fridge and grabbing an orange juice, walking it to the bar, and grabbing a pint glass, filling the glass almost full with water, topping off with orange juice, finding salt on a nearby dinner table, and shaking it into my DIY rehydration solution. Finding a wooden seat and waiting to see if I can keep it all down.
In my movie, I even had the window facing the warmth of the sun on my cold cheeks.
After reaching the ridge, I stopped all imagination movies, as the ground needed my eyes. Time to descend on skis. It was as slow, it seemed, as climbing. It begged all my focus not to fall as I wobbly held my balance, periodically sending myself down the icy, snow-packed sections, vaguely terrified but staying upright.
Soon, once in the treeline, I passed an equally wobbly family on skis and a man in boots with a huge barrel camera out to shoot the park wildlife. I was in the Orange Juice Zone.
4 miles. Very dehydrated. Weak. 7 degrees.
I’m Done.
And while it was not the hardest few hours of my life, the memory will last. These are the small moments of growth, the out-of-nowhere calls to resoluteness. Vomit and ski! It was the lesson I needed. The morning brought Mikael and me even closer as partners, demonstrating my graft and resilience and his emotional support, experience, and brute strength.
Uncomfortable mornings in all their forms come to give you a dose of who you really are. Sometimes you flop the challenge, and sometimes you’re a winner!
I skied to Mikael’s car, and wrote “I love you” in the snow on his windshield and slow marched through the station doors past the workers, who greeted me with something in Swedish.
“Happy New Year!” it might have been.
Orange juice.
And an hour later.
Winners eating pizza.
