Rebellion 2010

I'm heading off in two days on an epic adventure. If I survive the snow, cold, and four days with my daredevil mother, I'll tell you all about it when I come back.

Half of my family – my sister and father – are also leaving in two days, to go on their second annual cross-country ski trip in Baxter State Park in northern Maine. There, they will ski 14+ miles each day, traveling from one cabin to the next, transporting their supplies on their backs, wearing the same underwear day after day to avoid carrying extra weight. They will eat their lunches each day standing up, because where can you comfortably sit in February in Baxter State Park in three-plus feet of snow? In the evenings, when they arrive at their cabins, they will hasten to light a fire to warm up, then cook unappetizing camping meals like macaroni and cheese with beans and tofu mixed in, accompanied by bread baked in a plastic bag; for dessert they will consume brownies from a mix, burned on the bottom, raw on top. To train for the trip, they strapped on their skis and filled backpacks with rocks. Sounds like fun, right?

The other (better) half of the family, me and my mom, were not invited. We may not be as athletic or wilderness survival-savvy; we may not know how to work a camping stove or, in my case, own any pants that are not made of cotton, but no one can accuse us of being any less foolhardy. And so, we planned our own trip, which we call “Rebellion 2010.” Coincidentally, we will be traveling on the same days as the other trip – they go by the moniker “Camping Snobs 2010” – and we will also be in northern Maine, just a smidge southeast of Baxter (but no, we won't be carpooling with CS2010). We will travel from one Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) hut to the next, skiing between 9 and 11 miles per day.

A photo from CS '09: Dad takes a tumble

And there, the similarities end. Mom and I have not been training with rock-filled backpacks, because we will not be transporting our own gear; the AMC is kindly taking care of that for us. We will change our underwear at LEAST twice during the four days we will be away. We are not choosing which headlamps, skis and long underwear to bring, because we own one (or one pair) of each, unlike the participants of CS2010, who each own enough gear to outfit a small army of skiers. We are not spending our weekend weighing oatmeal and calculating how many calories we will need for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because our minions will be cooking these meals for us. And the most important item to pack? Our bikinis, for the end-of-trip sauna. I'm hoping it will be reminiscent of Spa Castle. Who knows, maybe they'll throw in a pedicure, too.

As long as we don't die, I think Rebellion 2010 will be a lot of fun. Much more fun, of course, than Camping Snobs 2010. Unfortunately, neither my mom nor I knows how to work a compass, which we will need to do to find our way from one hut to the next. And, while my mom has been skiing quite a bit lately, the last time I went was two years ago; I went about two miles before I headed for home, with the strong conviction that I had worked enough to deserve a hot chocolate with a little special something mixed in. But I'm sure we'll figure it out, and I am definitely going to be earning enough hot chocolates to get me through the rest of winter, and maybe through 2011 as well.