My love perches on a rock with his skin still glistening from a plunge in the cold river, pen roving madly over the pad of paper in his hand. Whatever thought seized him couldn’t wait for him to pull on a pair of boxers, and he writes naked to the Arctic sun. No one will see, anyway. Several days into hiking and packrafting in Alaska’s Brooks Range on our honeymoon, and we haven’t glimpsed even evidence of another human.
As I watch him pause and gaze to the far peaks in thought, I think how, after the whir of the bush plane faded to leave us so alone together out here, and we hiked down the little creek canyon that first day past huge scat and the dragged bones of a moose, he announced our presence to potential bears with polite sentiments like, “Hello, grandmother,” and “We come in peace.” As I look at him, I think how there is nothing in the world but this wide river valley, these dinosaur mountains, and the two of us.
I’m astonished I used to think I could be with someone who isn’t adventurous.
Back in 2018, I wrote an essay for Adventure Journal claiming I could be happy dating a man who wasn’t adventurous. He met other needs, after all, like companionship and intellectual stimulation. He was ambitious (for a mountain town), funny, socially adept. But I could not, for the life of me, get him to play outside much with me. And even though I’d always pictured myself with a partner who wanted to explore the world, even though I looked wistfully at all the other relationships that embodied what I wanted—my sister and her husband hitchhiking on sailboats across the Pacific, two of my best friends embarking on a source-to-sea on the Colorado River—I told myself it didn’t matter. I’d surrounded myself with other people who could meet the adventure need.
I told myself, back then, that love isn’t about the most exciting or harrowing moments of experiencing the world and its cultures. Instead, love was a thousand ordinary weeknights, the sum of which can add up to happiness.
Shocker: that relationship didn’t work out.
I first met my now-husband, Ben, on a (failed) adventure when I was still living in Montana. It was a blind date of epic proportions: he invited me to climb a peak in Glacier National Park where he was working trail crew, we got lost, I didn’t handle it well, and we fell out of contact for years. (Yes, there’s more of a story there, maybe I’ll tell it sometime.)
We reunited—not long, relatively, after that unsuccessful relationship in which I tried to convince myself I didn’t need someone adventurous—over explorations. I was living in Revelstoke, B.C., at the time, and he in Whitefish, Montana. Every two weeks, we came together in either spot or somewhere in between. I fed him my northern landscape, the big newness and awesome potential of it all, the dark rainforest with ancient trees and the snowblind ridges unfurling to the Arctic (to here, to now). He fanned the dying embers of Montana’s gold hill horizons in me.
But there was a hitch. Ben liked to explore differently than I did. He loved a certain place, a remote cabin in a dark wood that he returned to year after year, while I always wanted the rush of newness. He moved most often on foot (over huge distances), and I preferred to mountain bike and run rivers. I accused him once, myopically, of not liking to take risks, in the absence of an ardent love affair with ski touring and a willingness to paddle whitewater that matched mine—and he reminded me that his form of risk is tracking mountain lions and wolves in below-freezing temperatures. He is always pointing out little wonders that I don’t see, hungry as I am for the wide lens of it all.
Though we sometimes don’t share the same modes of or desires in how to experience the natural world, I’ve come to realize that such an ongoing ability to teach each other things is a key element of a rich and successful love. And it comes from a shared value of exploring in the wild—which is as much a foundational value as kindness, morality, or any other principle that, if not shared, becomes a deal breaker.
From his station on the rock in the middle of the Arctic, my husband looked up at me and smiled, his dimple flashing, and my heart nearly stopped in the grace of the moment.
I’ve never wanted a thousand ordinary weeknights. I want this: a wild love.
Great piece! Ben sounds awesome.
I also love that you didn't need a mirror image of yourself adventure-wise. So good to have someone similar, but different. My wife balances me that way; she loves getting out, but notices the little bugs and moss and the changing seasons. I pull her to keep moving and she keeps me from blowing through the amazing things that the outdoors offers.
"He fanned the dying embers of Montana’s gold hill horizons in me." Ah! I just love your writing.