How we got here

On the other side of the planet, ten months ago and 50 degrees warmer, four old friends sat around a platter of Ethiopian injera bread and found themselves talking about quite a different place (a place far-removed and distant not just from Ethiopia, but in some ways, even from its own state), and began to plot a very different winter, one that would not involve world travel, or malaria medication, or crowded mini-bus rides through dirty foreign cities.

The plan didn’t resurface until many months later, but when it did, it was no less tempting. By then, my husband and I had returned to Idaho from Ethiopia, and our third consecutive year living outside the US. As we have for nearly ten years, we spent the summer in Stanley, a tiny mountain town in the heart of the Idaho wilderness, at the edge of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. The friends who’d shared that injera (and December in Ethiopia with us) were back in Stanley, recovering from the rest of their winter travel, skiing, yoga-ing, and exploring in India, and they’d recruited two more (+ child) willing masochists to our budding plan.

And then we were six (+ child).

We’ve all secured warm and cheap accommodations for the coming bleak months; trees have been dropped and chopped and stacked, and pantries have been stocked with enough flour and yeast to bake us a whole new cabin, just in case we burn this one down. A few of us have very part-time jobs, but most of us are just waiting for the snow to fall, and winter to truly begin.