PERSONAL ESSAY
A Knee-Deep Insanity in -28°C
A brief note on fighting a snowstorm with a new headlamp and rented skis
It’s minus twenty-eight degrees Celsius, and I haven’t seen the tip of my skis for over an hour. I left the cabin under a calm sky, but the snowfall escalated the further up I went. Now I’m knee-deep, treading squeaky snow one step at a time. The bright light from the headlamp bounces on a tireless white curtain while ghostly shadows do a “Danse Macabre” among the trees. It’s close to midnight, and I’ve been pushing through on this highland route for almost three hours.
My wife called me stubborn as I started dressing for the second lap. I had already done the route during our short daylight window, and now I wanted to know what it would be like using my new headlamp — a reason good as any to keep my mind off things. The physical strain is a release, a clearance of the mind’s tendency for detours, or a callback to zero. Dark letters on a blank page, rebuilt to keep a story going.
I’m here to prove a point.
Six months earlier, I stood on set for a German movie where I played the secret lover in a mother-daughter story. To me, the script was simple in its parts, and I dared myself I could do it better. So here I am in the highlands of northern…
