"All perspective has an expiration date" wrote Will Guidara, in [[readings/unreasonable hospitality]]. I read these words on day 16 in the remote [^1] Alaskan wilderness, in possibly the farthest environment from the comfortable hospitality that defined 11 Madison Park & other fine dining restaurants thousands of miles away. Doing a month and change of mountain expedition is, if nothing else, a complete change in perspective. Many of the material conditions I took for granted were gone — running water, the ability to throw trash out, absolute confidence a bear was not around the corner — meaning survival became my mental monologue. There is, also, no such thing as excess within the mountains. Scarcity insidiously creeps into every part of your life: food is rationed, dry clothes are limited, and even the abundant natural water had to be treated with a finite supply of chemicals.[^2] Thankfully, we were provided with plenty — although, the double edge of a backpacking trip is that you have to carry that plenty on your back. I thought a lot about food this trip. I think it was between my fourth time eating "milky pasta with assorted ingredients" and "dough with a pound of butter" that I picked up, well, all of Bourdain's written work, and started daydreaming more & more about the flavourful meals I had mistakenly never given distinct attention in my mind. I missed non-dried vegetables & snacks that weren't trail mix & meat that wasn't "beef summer sausage", which had usually been marinated next to someone's wet sleeping bag for a week. Reading books about cooking while in the back-country may intuitively sound like sadistic self-punishment, but nothing could be further from the truth. In the "front-country", food is more of a constraint, in the sense that calories tend to be limited with ceilings more than floors. In the "back-country", your body burns calories at every point in the day, meaning when you finish hiking the daily 6 miles and set down your 50 pound backpack, your body is still churning through fuel in order to beat out the surrounding cold. Practically, this means standard cooking advice is to raise your butter, oil, and fat intake to the power of ten — which, in turn, makes experimenting with dishes much easier. Paired with the discovery of an "expedition cookbook", thus came the slew of inventive dishes — chicken alfredo using milk powder, homemade chili oil topping ramen, and, of course, backcountry pizza. I think the fact food is central to most cultures — and specifically, how people form relationships — isn't a coincidence. Asking if someone has eaten or feeding someone is practically a love language. It represents care for someone else, and it represents trust on the part of the receiver. And nowhere is that more true than in the backcountry — where taste is now vital to keep easily-broken spirits high, and where food determines issues of survival, like whether you'll have enough to stay warm during a cold night or to make it to the next camp. We used to borderline-worship our pilot, Rob Wing (yes, Wing — is that not awesome?) partially because he brought us food, partially because the glimpses we got at his character revealed something magical. Occasionally, though, expiration dates are imprecise, and the change in perspective will come after a change in environment. That was how I felt scarfing down about twice as much as I'd regularly eat for about a week after getting home, my body feeling like there was a finite supply or that I'd be cold in the climate-controlled rooms of civilisation. Still, there was evidence of the catch-up happening: foods that would make us salivate in the wilderness just tasted *good*, the absurdity of the stories we told our friends started to feel more apparent. Yet, in some ways, this shift in perspective is necessary for survival. Standards must be shifted to make foods that are frontcountry terrible become backcountry delicious. That, in some ways, was the least of our challenges on the expedition: we had to walk up and down countless mountains while the freezing rain poured down our faces, all to get to a camp where we'd pitch a tent as it hailed; or we'd entrust our lives to other teenagers we met two weeks ago as they navigated on a compass and a map from the 1950s, happily singing along. These challenges didn't cause anxiety or paralysis; instead, they were just daily occurrences under the Alaska perspective — a fact that is not shared boastfully, but more to illustrate just how influential a perspective can be. Our first day as an independent group — the instructors leaving us with food, Xs on a maps, and a deadline to meet back up in three days — was spent huddling in a tent, waiting for the thick fog to clear up so we'd have visibility. Alaska chose to remain steadfastly mysterious. We couldn't wait another day if we wanted to make it to the bus, and so we hurriedly pushed on. And due to the fog, we ended up going down the wrong mountain pass. The river we were actually meant to be next to ran closely parallel to the one we were now walking alongside for about four miles. Which meant, for the next four miles, our GPS that was accurate to about a quarter mile wouldn't reveal our mistake. Each of us had a growing suspicion we were off-course — the terrain was extremely bushy, snapping ominously against our group's already-weakened ankles, eyes, and spirits; and landmarks we expected simply never appeared. We chalked it up to the instructors not realising it would rain, figuring this level of slipperiness was the actual reason we rolled our ankles constantly. At the end of the river, we realised we were trapped in by sheer faced cliffs on all sides except the one we came. The GPS finally confirmed we had gone the wrong way. When I embarked on my gap year, my parents' only requirement was that I remain safe. They've instilled this philosophy of knowing everything will be okay, as long as I remain safe, since I was born. Now, we were stuck off-course in the remote wilderness,[^1] without obvious running water, a group of six that were all in varying stages of hypothermia, and an extremely limited food supply; with no way of contacting the instructors or signalling our location. For the first time on the gap year — and in my life — I figured there was a probable chance of death. ~ I write this now from a little motel room outside of Richmond, Virginia, where the cleanliness standards are roughly as expected. A bed, warm weather, air conditioning, running water, etc, no matter the condition, would have been something close to providential in Alaska; after a few weeks at home and at friends' homes, it's something closer to punishment. My parents — whose comfort is more important and standards are certainly higher — kept, annoyingly, looking at the positive side, laughing at my morose observations of how important accommodation was for one's mood. What my parents are best at, more than anything else, is believing. They joke about escaping poverty because of good luck and a well-timed move to Canada; I maintain they, from the start, believed it would've happened. My parents always say that things will work out; and they tend to. ~ Our group's natural response to being stranded in bear country, with no help or emergency contact, was somehow very healthy. We told each other to not lose hope, that things weren't as bad as they seemed. We had logical discussion — even if some of the ideas, like scaling a mountain pass in the night to get back to our friends by dawn, weren't as logical — and came up with a plan. We set up camp, pitched tents, prepared rations quickly, and got enough calories to go to bed. The next morning, we started retracing our steps. Our plan worked out better than we could've imagined, as the other two groups (our friends, our instructors — also friends, but you get the point) had made the exact same mistake. With some hollering to get their attention, we all met up, and fell crying into each others' arms (not dramatic effect; at least one person from each group cried). While there was no logical discussion for this decision, it was one reached unanimously — thus concluded the one-day long independent expedition period. We would all hike together from now on. ~ Little reminders exist to re-instill, or reinforce, the perspective that Alaska threw at us. Other perspectives we won't be able to get back. I'll never be able to replicate, fully, the peace of not having a phone, or the connections made when meeting for the first time by sharing a tent, or the euphoria of thin wheats and butter when every calorie counts. I'll also never be able to replicate my mom's relief when I called her, or my friends' laughter when I shared how we went to the bathroom, or the taste of that first McDonald's our entire group ordered from. I don't think there's some unique, important, singular perspective gained from being in the wilderness or travelling abroad or meditating or anything else imaginable. All perspectives, after all, have an expiry date. I do, however, remember Alaska when I least expect it: when I over-season my food in layers or sleep in motels with sufferingly-positive parents; just as I remember a story when I tie my shoes a certain way or when my friends mention a specific city or someone asks what my favourite place was; just as I remembered that this too shall pass whenever I had to go to bed wet or reckon with our survival odds. Added up, those perspectives — those memories — form who I am, no matter how temporary. [^1]: The "emergency" device we were given would call park rangers, who would then land at the "nearest access point" if "weather permitted" — which, of course, rendered our lives completely dependent on Alaska's notoriously permitting weather. Also, we were usually about a week's hike from all human access points. [^2]: Fun aside: I mistakenly remembered the dosage as *double* what it actually was, which I found out when I realised not everyone on the expedition had grown tired of the chlorine taste like I had.