The Complete Snow Camper's Guide [antikvár]

Introduction Custom dictates that an author owes the reader some justification before asking him to delve into a book—a reasonable requirement in an age when trees and leisure are scarcer than words on wood pulp. So, why this book? One morning a couple of years ago, I drifted slowly into wakefulness from a warmth made blissful by the contrasting cold of the air on my face. I pulled on my clothes inside my sleeping bag and crawled out of the small mountain tent, moving carefully to avoid knocking frost from the walls onto my sleeping companion. Outside was a world so fantastically bright and new and sparkling with white light that my first reaction of exultation was replaced by a wonder that I should be allowed to be there at all. The clarity of colors—orange tent, green trees, blue sky—stood out against the snow, and above it all stood the peaks of the Sierra Nevada—the Snowy Range—renamed the Range of Light by John Muir. The day before, we had skied to this spot in "whiteout" conditions—snow blowing so hard we could see nothing. We struggled with the tent in the wind, finally pitching it well enough to last the night, and tumbled into our sleeping bags inside. The roar of our cooking stove competed with that of the wind, and the meal completed a kind of existential sense of well-being that seems only to come with hard physical effort. Now, the next morning, the fruits of the storm sparkled on the branches of lodgepole pines—the miracle of the Spartan, pristine, incredibly beautiful world of winter—a world born clean and new with every snowstorm. Introduction I