Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/24995
person. Part of being perfect means that she's a natural athlete, the sort of per son who can ski and play golf, climb mountains and drive stick-shift jeeps. Even if there's something she's never done before, there's never a problem: she can do it. It's somawhat depressing to be reminded constantly of my incompe tence. On the other hand, there's no one else I know crazy enough to jump at the chance to do things that sound terrible and while doing so, remain patient with me. By now, the two of us know that the main thing in preparing for an adven ture trip is to be ful ly prepared. What this means, in layman's terms, is never be without a steady supply of alcohol. We had heard liquor was expensive in Norway, so Paige carried three bottles of red wine, while I brought the Stoli vodka, six splits of Krug champagne and all the miniatures of Remy Martin cognac I could collect on my SAS flight from New York to Oslo. Life in the bleak Arctic could be bleak and we didn't want to develop scurvy. So each of us brought Tabasco sauce, lemons, and V-8 ·juice and vast quan tities of makeup (or at least I had vast quantities, since without a lot of makeup I might horrify the indigenous peoples, who according to my guidebooks were a bit like Eskimo but wore more glamorous clothes). Clothing. This could be a problem, we realized: Looking stylish in a place where the sun didn't shine and the temperature could reach 50· below might be difficult. So we each acquired a complete set of deluxe sports gear: a lightweight, very warm coat; long underwear; heavy, lined boots; purple polar fleece tops and black polar fleecEO pants. I picked up a few extra sets of thermal underwear, woolen socks and lined gloves. Our suitcases, at this point, were almost impossible to zip shut, but in the event that some night we went out on the town, we definitely needed slinky dresses, and this gave me the perfect opportunity to pack my brand-new brown velvet boots. (On the last trip-sea kayaking with the killer whales I had brought a blue sequined miniskirt and spike-heeled boots, which I never did get the opportunity to wear.) It too.k around twenty-four hours to reach Kirkenes, Norway's northern most town, but part of the reason was that we had to hang around the Oslo airport for six hours, shopping and eating our last meal before getting on a small plane which-as Paige kept poking me in the ribs and pointing out during the three-and a-half-hour flight-had lots of ice on its wings. Because the little Arctic town had been bombed during the war, all the buildings were new, and our hotel in Kirkenes-although it had a definite Scandinavian flair-might have been anywhere in the world. I don't know where I had gotten the idea that the Kirkenes Hot our heavy-duty snow gear. Living in New York City I really wasn't accustomed to dressing in so many layers. By the time I had put on all the items in my suitcas es, I was so stuffed I could barely move. But we were warm. I did notice, staggering down the street, that everyone who lived in the town was just wearing sweaters, and that the thermometer registered about thirty-four degrees above zero, but I was glad I had come prepared for any thing. Thanks to my new sportswear, it could just as easily haye been, say, nine ty-eight or one hundred two degrees. It was almost too hot to move, especial ly after the hotel breakfast: brown Norwegian sheep's milk cheese, muesli, toast, yogurt, eggs, bacon paste, caviar paste and anchovy paste were served buffet-style in an empty dining room. Actually, I was the one who had the huge breakfast. Paige is a strict vegan. She had the muesli with some orange juice on it. Then the manager of the hotel came in. "Ho, ho, ho," he said. He was very tall and skinny, with a bristling mustache, and, I think, had lived in the Arctic for too long. "How did .you sleep? Did you like your breakfast? Did you like your codfish last night? It was fresh codfish. I hear you two are going off on a rein deer expedition today." This was apparently big news in the village. "I perhaps should not tell you this, but, recently, in the area you are going, a reindeer was found dead. He was perhaps eaten by wolves or a wolverine. I am afraid should not be telling you this, or you will become fearfu l! Ho, ho, ho!" It was that time of year known as twenty-four hours of darkness. While in the summer here it is light for twenty-four hours, it's just the opposite in winter. I was expecting pitch darkness, although it was �fter ten a.m. As we piled into a heated Volvo (driven by Bridget, from the Norwegian Board of Tourism) I realized it wasn't dark at all. Just because the sun wasn't visible over the edge of the horizon didn't make a place dark. It simply made it look like winter in upstate New York or Massachusetts: grim, gray and overcast. I think Bridget was a little shocked at the abundance of our neces saries. Little did she understand how important it was to be prepared for any contingency. Our bags contained snacks, wine, coffee (and small Melita filter coffee maker), cameras, quantities of makeup and makeup removers, novels, guidebooks, extra clothing and small cartons of orange juice we had bought at a nearby shopping mall. The back of the car was already stuffed with polar suits and sleeping bags-on loan. This part of our journey would last one night, so we decided to ';l was going to be an igloo. There was plenty of heat, really cozy down comforters on the beds and a kitchen which although it had already closed-kindly provided us with fried codfish before we went to sleep. The next day, expecting sub-sub-sub-zero temperatures, we piled into all leave our four large suitcases with evening clothes back at the hotel. Bridget seemed re lieved. We set out for the launching point of our reindeer safari. The rein deer safari was run by a family-owned business in a nearby village. Only the Sami (an indigenous Lapland people) can own reindeer, so the family-who were Norwegians, not Lapps-simply hired a Sami guide and leased some rein deer to get tourists. Actual ly, there really weren't any other tourists apart from us. At the main lodge we were served lunch. Since I had just finished that huge hotel breakfast, I wasn't all that hungry, but it seemed best to eat in case of emergency, or if later on we couldn't get any food. It would be terri ble if we somehow got stuck out in the wilderness and starved to death. Besides, as John (the son of the household, who was going to take our things to the .cabin in the woods) explained, his mother had cooked lunch for us. Remarkably, notification that Paige was a strict vegan had somehow reached Reindeer Headquarters. Lunch consisted of a corn, tomato and pasta salad, two types of stuffed peppers, some filled with rice, others with eggplant; ratatouil le; roasted !!,otatoes; .and, for me, a gigantic platter of reindeer stroganoff. I can't say the reindeer stroganoff was delicious, but this may have been due to my lack of hunger. I had been prepared for reindeer to have that gamy venison taste that I really don't like, but it didn't. The meat was chewy but