Forrest snowshoes toward me like my laziness is emitting a radar signal. “The wind is going to come whipping right off the cliff toward us,” he says. “You want to pick a spot with some coverage.”
I glance around at the nearly featureless landscape. “Great idea, but unless you’re going to stand in front of my tent all night, there’s nothing else around,” I point out.
“I’m setting up my tent between theirs and building a snow wall. You can set yours up behind mine. Come on.”
Oh. Well, I suppose that’s considerate. Then again, I suppose it’s also his job to make sure I don’t die out here. But before I can thank him, he’s stomping off again, leaving me to follow in his snowshoe prints.
As it turns out, building a snow wall is kind of fun, if hard manual labor is your thing. It’s not my thing, but at the very (very) least, it’s keeping me warm. Unpleasantly sweaty, actually, despite Forrest’s constant warnings not to overheatorget too cold. Unlikehim, however, I’ve been unable to maintain perfect homeostasis and have simply embraced feeling like a ripe gym sock.
“Are you drinking water?” Forrest asks for the hundredth time as I pat more snow into place. After all our efforts, we’ve created a rectangular pit into which both our tents will fit.
“Yes,” I reply, pausing to take a small sip of water from the silicone tube connected to my pack. I’ve honestly been avoiding drinking too much because peeing in arctic temperatures sounds about as fun as, well, peeing in arctic temperatures.
Forrest pulls up the sleeve of his coat to look at his watch. “We only have an hour till sunset. Let’s get building, and make sure you’re not sweating.”
I laugh. “Do you need me to stop breathing too?”
“I’m serious, Margot. I told you to remove layers if you start overheating. Sweating is dangerous in these conditions.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have made me snowshoe across the entire polar ice cap and build a snow fort,” I say defensively, holding my arms out from my waist. “This coat is basically a water balloon now.”
Forrest looks at me like I’ve announced my imminent death.
“Stop worrying. I’m fine,” I say with more confidence than I actually feel. “Let’s get building.”
We open our bags to find our tents. Naturally, Forrest’s is strategically packed at the top, while I have to dump literally everything out to find mine. I’m still rummaging by the time his small one-person tent is set up, and he comes over to crouch beside me.
“I think all the tent stuff is in bags like this,” I say, holding up a blue drawstring bag.
To my surprise, he’s fighting back a smile and keeps looking away from the haphazard diaspora of camping shit strewn about me. I whack him in the shoulder with a clatter of tent poles and try not to smile myself. “Don’t laugh at my packing skills.”
“?‘Skills’?” he repeats.
I try whacking him again, but he catches it. “Why don’t you work on getting all your other gear back in your bag, and I’ll set up your tent.”
I stare at him. “Really? You’ll build it for me?”
“If I don’t, I’m not sure you’ll finish by sunrise.”
“Rude, but probably accurate,” I say, sighing. Then, suddenly suspicious, I say, “You’re not going to withhold my letters or make me, like, whittle a walking stick instead, are you?”
He smiles in earnest, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it since that night in his cabin. The harder I try to look away, the harder it becomes.
“Don’t give me ideas,” he warns. “Come on. We’re losing daylight.”
I’ve begun stuffing gear back into my bag when Ollie’s boots appear at the edge of our pit. “Hey there! Need a hand with anything?”
He’s watching me wrestle my sleeping bag into my pack like it’s an anaconda, but Forrest answers first.
“That’d be great, Ollie. Can you set up the camp kitchen? I left everything right over there,” he says, pointing his mitten to a lonely pile of gear a solid thirty feet away from us.
“Uh, sure. No problem,” Ollie says, looking at me like I might save him.
“Great,” Forrest replies, unsheathing some tentpoles. “We need to get some water boiling as soon as possible.”
“On it,” Ollie says glumly before turning away.
“Margot, are there any other blue bags over there?” Forrest calls over to me.
