Sam Brakeley

Vermont writer and wilderness professional; author of three historical/outdoor adventure books; an avid skier, hiker, and canoeist; runs Hermit Woods Trailbuilders, LLC, a trail construction and dry stone masonry company

Skiing with Henry Knox

The author and Elizabeth on a few of their shared outdoor adventures


As I lie here and let them defrost against my chest, adding to the moisture and rank odor of the sleeping bag, I wonder to myself for the thousandth time since starting this trip, “What the hell am I doing out here?” But within the hour, having finally managed to slide my ski boots on and eat a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, I hit the trail.

Almost immediately I began to descend through an open hardwood forest. The snow stands several feet deep and consists of the lightest powder. Birches, maples, and beeches whiz past as I take big swooping turns around boulders and over fallen logs. Snow whooshes up into my mouth and eyes with each maneuver, and I feel as though I’m floating down a cascading river of snow. Not a breath of wind stirs the branches, not a sound disturbs the snowy woods.

Except for me.

I yell for the sheer pleasure of it, the delight of this wonderful descent on this mountain. Not words, just nonsensical hoots and hollers of pure joy.

This is what the hell I’m doing out here!

Months before this blissful morning, the whole premise had sounded a lot more impulsive and foolhardy than brave or audacious when, the previous fall, I’d told my girlfriend, Elizabeth, of my resolution to ski the length of the Catamount Trail.

“I thought that was just a pipe dream,” she had said, a little disbelievingly. “Something you’ve been talking about. I didn’t know you were actually planning it.”

Her brown eyes had looked hard into mine, hoping to see the glimmer of some joke she wasn’t getting. But I wasn’t kidding, in spite of her incredulity.

“You don’t even like to cross-country ski all that much.”

“That’s not true,” I remember saying – even though it was sort of true. I didn’t particularly enjoy chasing her around in circles, so I parried. “I like to cross-country ski just fine. I’m just not that good at it.” She was nice enough not to agree with me.

She did have a point. She knew far more about winter travel and cross-country skiing than I did, and up to this moment, I hadn’t shown her a lot of enthusiasm when we’d gone out together. Elizabeth was an excellent XC skier who had raced during her school years. She loved to speed along a groomed course, and she’d also guided multi-week winter expeditions through the mountains of northern New England.

I was much less experienced in winter-camping, and I had to struggle to keep up with her on those same groomed courses. She would lap back and forth in front of me, much like a dog will do with its owner on a walk, her thin, muscular form eating up the distance, me far behind, seeing the back of her winter hat and brown ponytail sticking out below it. She wished (often out loud) that I could pick up my pace.

I had always felt that I was holding her back on excursions like those. But when we were off the track, trekking through the woods and ducking branches as we carved our own path, I felt a greater sense of fulfillment, finding that I could keep up with her through the deeper, untracked snow.

The unspoken truth of that conversation was that Elizabeth was trying to convince me how bad an idea the trip was because she was deeply concerned for my well-being. Bad things can happen fast in freezing cold, far from help. A solo winter journey through deep snow and subzero temperatures is dangerous. She knew it in the course of a single day I could get lost, get frostbite or hypothermia, or die.

You get theses ideas in your head, and you just can’t shake them,” she said. “Once you dream up a trip, you can’t let it go until you do it. Just because you think it doesn’t mean you have to do it.” At this point she tucked herself into the crook of my arm, fitting snugly into my shoulder, and squeezed me tightly.

This was patently true, and we both knew it. I’m a dreamer, and once my imagination seizes hold of a new adventure, it’s very hard to let it go. I get caught up in the fantasy, the excitement of traveling to an unknown place.

This isn’t my first trip, and it won’t be my last. Each and every time, the pure potential – the newness of an expedition – seizes hold of me, not to release its grip up until I’m actually under way and setting out on the journey.

But what’s wrong with that? In response, I just smiled. We both knew she was right.

from Skiing with Henry Knox by Sam Brakeley (Islandport Press)