Ice Dreams

Half the trip to Alaska is planned. The route. Where to camp. A couple hotels. Places to shower.

A friend told me I need to get a bear can and hang all my food in a tree at night when I camp because a grizzly will break into my car while I'm sleeping in it. I'll have a cooler and it's not practical to put perishables in a bear can and definitely not in a beer can and she's just saying this stuff because she cares about my wellbeing and has a funny way of showing it, as most people do.

Of course that doesn't mean the seed hasn't been planted. I already have a fear of bears as it is, but mostly that's because I've never seen one in the wild. Apparently we have bears here, right here in Oregon, right here on Mt. Hood, where I once went solo backpacking for three days with my pre-Pilot dog and kept all my food on me and in my tent and never got beared.

I didn't know there were bears, though, when I did that hike.

Never backpacking again.

No, that's not true. I've already been since.

This is Mt. Hood.⬇️ In Oregon. Not Alaska.

⬇️These are trees and snow on a frozen lake that isn't cold enough to be frozen enough to ice skate on, plus someone would have to Zamboni all that snow outta the way and it would be hard to get a Zamboni up the hiking trail I took to get there. The hiking trail I took while not thinking about bears.

I think we just have black bears. Not brown bears or grizzly bears or polar bears or Chicago Bears or god forbid, Boston Bruins.

Speaking of Zambonis and Bruins, the Bruins are not going to the Stanley Cup Final, but the Colorado Avalanche are, and I am quite pleased by this.

I used to go to the hockey bar when I was a bar-goer and watch hockey games and drink drinks that I don't drink anymore and smoke cigarettes that I don't smoke anymore and talk to mostly old dudes about hockey because they were fascinated by the young-looking chick wearing the Canucks sweater.

I kind of miss that life.

I don't miss getting drunk and the last time I tried to smoke a cigarette it was the most disgusting act I'd performed in my life, which was surprising considering I'd performed that same disgusting act multiple times a day for many years before one day I realized it was disgusting. I guess I just had to make sure it was still gross. It was.

I do miss the bar party and all the booze and yelling at the big screen. When Martinez scored the winning shot in 2014 against the Rangers after close to ten-thousand hours of overtime, I jumped up and hugged a stranger.

I don't miss hugging strangers, but in the heat of the moment it was glorious.

Going to bars is expensive, though, and hangovers suck, and summertime in the Pacific Northwest means endless daylight, and daylight hours are better spent outside with crows than inside with loud and boisterous bar patrons.

Still, you know, Stanley Cup Final and Avalanche. If they play against the Lightning it's two forces of nature duking it out. Fire and ice. I wonder who Robert Frost would root for?

If it's Avalanche vs Rangers, well... let's just say I don't think any team of forest rangers can stand up to an avalanche. Forest fires, sure. And I'd trust them to defend my honor and my life against bears. But thousands of tons of snow barreling down on them at speeds I'm too lazy to google? Naw. Avalanche for the win.

So who wants to go watch a game with me at a noisy sweaty drunken bar? Soda water's on me.

_{All pictures and words copyright Anna Horvitz (me) and cannot be used without my consent.}