Cold Trail Into Adventure

The sum of cross-country skiing is traveling the trackless. It is a pursuit of happiness without profit motive or machinery, a gentle quest for serenity in chaos. One seeks fresh places, spacious places. One seeks hills with no barbed wire, woods where no engines can be heard, unwrinkled blankets of snow. One seeks another planet. One seeks—Alaska.

The two tenderfeet from a town in upstate New York arrive in Anchorage late in the winter. Though both of them are absolute cheechakos by Alaskan standards (the modern-day use of the term refers to anyone who has not wintered up there), the two New Yorkers are not utter dummies when it comes to cross-country skiing. They have glided many idyllic miles through orchards of twisted pear trees and bare vineyards in their own home countryside. They have skied the gray woods of the Catskill Mountains and trekked on snowy banks above the cement plants that scar the Hudson River shore.

The cheechakos are not tyros. However, it is true that when they ski they are accustomed to the whine of chain saws, barking dogs, the gnashing of garbage-can covers in the distance. They are accustomed to the sight of houses, ice-cream stands, mailboxes and antique stores. They have long ago perfected techniques for climbing fences and crossing paved roads on skis.

Still, it must be said that even cross-country skiing past billboarded barns and sign-posted trees is not entirely lacking in spiritual resuscitation. Even with a cement plant lurking at the corner of an eye, the cross-country ski addict's heart sings and his spirit is fixed by the chance to stride on any carpet of new snow.

But no upstate apple orchard comes close to Alaska's Chugach Mountain Range, which is forbidding and bleak, nor is the Hudson River any match for Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm, those black sleeves of water that reach into Alaska from the north Pacific Ocean.

The New York visitors are smitten from the start by Alaska as they fly into Anchorage at sunset one evening. The elder of the two, an excitable 42-year-old who is overblown in his enthusiasms, sees the Chugach peaks for the first time, a row of great somber teeth ringing Anchorage, and he says reverently, "Good Lord, it is a dreamscape. The summits of the moon. The peaks of Eden. The mountains of Zeus."

The younger cheechako, who is 13 and not so caught by the intimations of mortality, says, "It's really cool."

At the airport they are met by a tall, rawboned, talkative fellow. His skin is tanned and seamed from the brief Arctic sun; his stride is strong and obviously he has covered much muskeg in summer, lots of snowy tundra in winter. He has a confident smile, a relaxed swagger; here, clearly, is a man who is skookum (knowledgeable). The name is Mike Hershberger, a native of Reno who came to Anchorage 10 years ago. Just into his 40s, he is jack of myriad trades and pastimes: a professional fishing guide (his brochures described him modestly as "The Fisherman"), pilot, biweekly columnist for the Anchorage Daily News , former Marine Corps survival instructor, failed poet, holder of a Master's degree in English from Kansas University, local figure-skating judge, tackle-store proprietor, originator of the Dame Juliana Berners Fly Fysshynge Association, president of the Anchorage Hunters and Fishermen Association and—most significant for this day—tour director of the Anchorage Nordic Ski Club.

Mike Hershberger grins at the newcomers. They are standing outside the terminal with their suitcases, gawking at Alaska like a couple of apple knockers just off the bus in New York City, agog at the sense of brute nature all around. They are clumsy in its presence. And so there arises something of the hayseed-city slicker relationship between them and skookum Mike Hershberger. It may not have been the first thing Mike says to them or even the second, but he is a consummate talker and soon enough he says, "Say, have either of you ever had a drink cooled with glacier ice?" The visitors shake their heads numbly; their eyes, shining, are fixed on him, and Hershberger says easily, "Nothing like it, fellas. Glacier ice is so concentrated it'll sit in a drink and never melt all night long. That is, if the drink lasts all night long."

Hershberger waits a while, then says, temptingly, "Ever eaten caribou sausage? It's like candy, not a bit gamy because caribou feed on moss and lichen all winter." The newcomers are very still. They swallow together and gaze in mute adoration at Mike Hershberger. He says, "Ever drunk homemade lowbush cranberry liqueur on a mountainside? Like nectar of the gods. Ever built your own igloo for a night in the bush? It's like snoozing in your own living room. Ever take a drink of whiskey at 40 below? I guess not. You'd be dead on the spot, because the stuff turns to ice the minute it hits your gizzard and you'd be stabbed to death with an icicle down your innards. Ever seen a glacier worm? Sure, they exist...little squirmy things scientists find on the ice...."