While day one was a true thriller, day two was pleasantly benign. Good. Thrillers make stories and we’re bound to have a few of those, but it’s no way to sustain a long expedition. Speaking of expeditions, Elaine shared a fun story with me today. I was inside the Fairbanks post office sending some stuff home and she was outside unloading boxes of food and such, when a lady in her 70s in a beat-up Ford pick-up truck drove by, rolled down her window, and told Elaine, “Looks like somebody is getting ready for an expedition. Have a wonderful time in the wilderness!” She sounded like some sort of reincarnation of Mardie Murie! I bet if they’d talked more, that woman would have had some great stories to tell.

That’s something I love about Fairbanks. While it’s not as spectacular geographically as say Jackson or Valdez or other mountain towns, it’s a true outpost and jumping-off point for wilderness expeditions. It strikes me as an exceptionally real and honest town without pretension, and the people there are some of the finest human beings I’ve ever met. In the coming weeks, I’ll try and mix in stories of the people of Fairbanks with stories of travel in the wild.

I woke up on this day with a slight sore throat. The first part of these expeditions is always stressful because it’s very easy to catch a cold or illness in civilization and bring it into the wild and then share it with each other. Having a respiratory illness in the backcountry is no fun. We intentionally pack Mucinex in our first ration for this reason. Once we’ve been out 7-10 days that risk goes to zero because we have no other human exposure. This mild sore throat was a concern but I was hoping it was just stress and getting cold and run-down the previous day.

We both slept 11 hours last night, which is the most we’ve slept since, well, we were out here last year, which was little surprising because we were camped smack-dab in the middle of polar bear terrain. Then again, we’re camped in bear terrain every night on these trips, and if we let that get to us we’d never sleep. We both sleep much better outside than we do inside, and cold foggy nights and cozy spots on the tundra offer some of the very best sleeping conditions.

Today we hiked south between two rivers flowing out of the mountains. We can’t see the mountains today but we know they are there. The terrain today was a mix of wet tundra, wet snow and occasional dry lichen patches. We went 12 miles and put some distance between us and the coast since the coast is polar bear country. It’s certainly possible polar bears could roam this far inland, but every step we take puts us further from their domain. About 1/2 mile into today we crossed massive bear prints heading north. That certainly got our attention. It’ll be a day or two before we’re out of Ursus maritimus terrain. Until then, I’ll try and wear some eyes on the back of my head! They are probably not here this time of year when the sea is still frozen and they can hunt seals from ice flows, but after our encounter with a polar bear in 2022 when they were also “not supposed to be there that time of year,” I figure it’s fair game for the next couple of days when it comes to these characters.

It’s a shame we have to put miles between us and the coast for safety reasons because the 8-10 miles inland from the sea ice is fascinating. The bird life is copious and wild. We saw another Snowy Owl, more Willow Ptarmigan than I can count and a Greater White Fronted Goose, a new one on my list. The echoing calls of the goose fit in perfectly with this arctic landscape, their quacks carrying across the foggy tundra. Elaine and I talked about how we’d like to spend an extended amount of time in this zone in the future and ways to do that, perhaps bringing a lightweight electric fence and spending more time with the birds.

As the day progressed it got foggier and colder. The wind seems to pick up and blow from the north in the afternoon. We set up camp after five hours of hiking on what seemed like the only dry patch of tundra for miles. There is a certain dream quality to the landscape. There is water everywhere, and if we didn’t have a GPS telling us otherwise, I’d guess we were still camped right on the ocean. A fog has engulfed our little dry island of tundra turning the light diffuse. Since it’s mostly flat, save a few hummocks on the tundra, and the sun never sets, it feels like time and place have no meaning here.

We had pasta for dinner, tea and two ginger candies each for dessert, standard fare on an expedition. It’s nice to simplify food for the next few months and probably better for the body too. I’m going to bed early tonight to beat this sore throat. It’s a cold night but spirits are good. I’m happy to be back in the wild, where life is simpler and the things that matter are right in front of you. I’ll take icy rivers and polar bears any day over deadlines, looming dates, too many people, and the other stresses of that other world.