If you’ve ever accidentally administered a muscle relaxant intravenously instead of intramuscularly, and then watched as your patient staggered around, trying to walk, you’ll have some idea of what I look like on a pair of snowshoes.
It’s comical, to say the least. You know how when you’re feeling really out of your depth and awkward, and one of the ways you console yourself is to remember that no one else is even paying you any attention, that they’re all equally consumed with the drama of their own lives? Well, just as I was doing that, one of the guys on this trip said, “Rachel, you’re looking better.” This was after lunch, and several hours into our hike, and I didn’t know what he meant by better — less cold? less wet? less hangry? He quickly clarified that I looked better on the snowshoes, after three hours of looking “noticeably uncomfortable.” Ah, yes. That would be me, noticeably uncomfortable.
Despite that, snowshoeing for hours through remote, wild, untouched forest is NEXT LEVEL.
We came across a female reindeer asleep in a snowdrift on top of a ridge. We munched on fir needles for energy and chewed birch buds for a hit of antioxidants. We learned how to make Labrador tea and where to expect bears to be hibernating.
Being in the forest is always magic. Being in a snow globe forest at the top of the world is something I will never forget. Marry me, Sweden.