Best Drink Ever Mixed! I was rafting the Hulahula River, above the Arctic Circle in the heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For eleven days I carried an airplane-bar size bottle of Jim Beam bourbon in my backpack and I never touched it. Why? I had Hollywood visions of ending up lost in the Arctic, injured on the coastal plain of the Refuge, something dramatic! I thought that tiny bottle of Jim Beam might be an emergency supply and be the difference between life and death. Okay, so I envisioned Barbara Stanwyck or Jean Arthur in the lead (a classic movie fan)! On the next to the last day we rafted in bitterly cold, truly bone-chilling winds (and years ago I thought the winds in Chicago off Lake Michigan were bad!). We also experienced something I shall never ever forget for it was an absolute collision of all my senses...we rafted through an Arctic ice shelf, both sides of the Hulahula, closed in by thick fog and clouds, not seeing more than a few hundred yards in front of us. It was perfectly silent, a silence like none I ever heard, except for the sound of the Hulahula and water running over the ice . It was dark and yet light because of the brilliant ice and snow, and there was an aqua hue on the ice and reflected in the air around. We stopped on the ice and I took my trusty Nalgene 32 ounce liquid container and filled it with absolutely pure Arctic ice water.
That night in my tent, tucked into my sleeping bag, and protected from wind and snow in the dark light of the land of the midnight sun, sensing the presence of the migrating Porcupine Caribou herd and all the other Arctic wildlife, I took the Jim Beam from my backpack. I poured half of it into my cup and then poured the Arctic water. THE best bourbon and water a bartender could ever serve! The other half of the bottle? Jim Beam sits here on my bookshelf as a significant memento of a fabulous experience in a land of incredible reverent beauty.
Help to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
**Photo of snow, ice and fog in the Lake District, Cumbria, England
Courtesy of Jamie Bassnett, Trekking Britain, see Life Links=>
