Abbie Goldberg (they/them) is a queer, disabled multidisciplinary artist, writer, puppeteer, drag creature, and theater maker from the mountains of rural Maine. They have been published by Autostraddle, Sinister Wisdom, Waif Magazine, Ak Press, HowlRound, The Niche and more. They love using creative spectacle to imagine other possibilities for this world-- a world that is hard to live in, but that they can't help but keep falling in love with anyway. They are currently based in New York.

sleeping bag socks

abbie goldberg

All names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the people in this essay.

When you’re living in the snow, the most important rule is to never work in your sleeping bag socks. Your sleeping bag socks are the softest pair you have, fuzzy, ideally covered in a fun pattern, maybe even an animal on the toe. You can wear them if you’re lounging about on an off day, or when you’re going to sleep, but you can’t work in these socks because they are sacred. When the days are long and your arms are sore from chopping wood or shoveling snow, you will need something to hold onto, something to work towards. Some days that will be revolution, but some days that will be your sleeping bag socks.

Beyond that, you can’t work in your sleeping bag socks because it’s not practical. They don’t have the moisture wicking properties of your base layer (likely long underwear made from a layered polyester mix). They are not made of scratchy wool so they can’t keep you warm if they get wet.

The mornings are so cold and your sleeping bag socks are so soft you won’t want to take them off, but you have to. If you try to work in your sleeping bag socks your feet will get wet and once you get wet, that’s when things get dangerous.

Despite being from Maine I have always hated the cold, so it was somewhat of an odd choice when nearly ten years ago I decided to spend six months living on the unceded territory of the Unist’ot’en people (located in what is also known as northern so-called British Columbia) in the middle of the winter. They had put out a call for allies to help protect their ancestral homeland from several proposed pipelines – projects that would devastate the natural environment and impede upon the Unist’ot’en people’s access to the land. Feeling depressed about the climate crisis and disillusioned by the local campaigns I was working on, I decided to go.

To get to Unist’ot’en Camp you must drive over an hour from Houston, BC through the winding, bumpy logging roads until you reach the Wedzin Kwah, a fierce glacial river. There you will find a bridge which you can only cross with consent from a member of the Wet’suwet’en community (Unist’ot’en is a clan of the Wet’suwet’en). Shortly after I arrived there was a colossal snowstorm leaving the logging roads completely covered. For the next three months the only way in or out of the camp was by snowmobile.

There was a small group of us there for those winter months, including other settler allies like myself, Indigenous allies, and Wet’suwet’en elders. At 19 I was the youngest of the bunch, most of the other allies were in their mid to late twenties. We worried about undercover cops, and secret recording devices so we didn’t share personal information. Instead we got to know each other through astrology, work styles, and favorite oatmeal toppings. Living in such intense conditions brought us together quickly with no need for backstories.

There was Lauren who had been coming to support the Unist’ot’en people for years by then, Camille who was quiet, but, if you asked, could tell you about dozens of different potato species, Ethan who kept a hand carved spoon and a titanium mug clipped to his belt. There was Josh who brewed matcha each morning, and Kai who always beat me at cards, and Marie, a proud gemini. There was River who I kissed one night in a snowbank beneath the full moon. We were a small group, but solid.

Most days were simple: each task contributed directly to our survival. We chopped wood, hauled water, kept the fire going, cooked food, washed dishes, shoveled snow off the roofs to keep them from falling in. In the evenings we played dominos and Fleetwood Mac on guitar around the fire. We kept community and we kept alive.

Twice a week some of us would ride the snowmobiles miles out into the forest to walk the trapline. Trapping animals is an important cultural practice for the Wet'suwet'en, a way they connect to the land and monitor its health. Additionally, selling skins is part of the legal strategy to assert and prove “aboriginal title” by demonstrating that they depend on this territory for ancestral practices carried out since time immemorial.

Walking the trapline takes hours of strenuous hiking over hills and down steep embankments, collecting martens, and resetting traps as you go. That winter it snowed so much that every week we struggled to break a new path, sinking down into the fresh fluff even in our snowshoes. We ate big breakfasts on trapline days, putting moose meat in our oatmeal so we wouldn’t have to stop and eat on the trail where our human scent could linger and frighten the animals away. We didn’t carry more than we needed and we left early in the morning to assure we’d make it back before dark. [1]

One day, all the Wet’suwet’en elders went out on the land to work on various projects, leaving the allies behind to manage the base camp. I stayed back with most of the group to do the daily chores while the others set out for the trapline. They got a bit of a late start, but it was a sunny day so we didn’t worry much. We chopped wood, hauled water, kept the fire going, kept community, kept alive.

At some point the clouds began to flatten and fill up with darkness, but around them the sky was still bright. We worried, but only a little. We cooked food, washed dishes, shoveled snow off the roofs to keep them from falling in. Surely the rest of the group would appear over the hill on their snowmobile any minute and we would all sit together for steaming bear meat chili and bannock. We went back to our tasks. We kept community, kept alive.

As night fell and the darkness seeped from the flattened clouds through the rest of the sky we got worried for real.

When the clouds started leaking the fast and heavy snowflakes that had been flattening them, then we got scared.

A call came over the walkie talkie, “The snowmobile just broke down and Camille is getting cold. Like… really cold.” The night wasn’t one of the coldest, but that made it worse. The snowflakes were wet and melted as they landed on just warm enough bodies. It isn’t the cold that gets you, it’s being wet and not being able to dry off. If you can’t dry off, you can’t warm up.

You have to take precautions on the trapline. You wear your wicking base layer, you take off your heaviest jacket before you walk, no matter how much you want to keep it on, but it’s a grueling day and inevitably you work up a sweat. Between the sweat, and the dark, and the snow, the situation for Camille was becoming extremely dangerous.

Ethan leapt up racing wildly around the bunkhouse, dropping one glove as he looked for the other. “We need to go right away! Josh, get the snowmobile ready! We’re going! We’ve got this!”

“Hold on,” Lauren interrupted his panicked flurry. “Let’s just take a second and make sure we have a real plan.” Lauren had already been around that winter for several months. It was Ethan’s first visit, but he had a burly beard, a hat that made him look like a park ranger, and a hand carved spoon clipped to his belt.

“Every second counts! This is life or death! We need to MOVE!” Ethan lunged for a half empty water bottle and sped off before anyone could object.

Lauren shook her head and stayed calm. “Put some water on the fire for tea and hot chocolate, make sure the walkie stays on and charged, I’m going to go get some dry clothes for when they get back. We’ll hang them by the fire so they’re extra warm.”

About 30 minutes later Ethan’s voice came through the walkie, still panicked, but this time embarrassed. “They’re out by the 11 km mark but…. we just made it to the 7 km mark. We ran out of fuel… I forgot to check the snowmobile for fuel.”

Lauren filled a thermos with the water we’d been boiling, Marie packed some food, and I bundled up the extra layers we’d been gathering before Ethan split. Then we checked the last remaining snowmobile for fuel and set off.

In the days to follow we would have lots of conversations processing the near disaster. We would talk about our various responses to crisis, where they came from, and how they worked. We would talk about gender dynamics, ingrained white supremacy culture, and how Ethan’s sense of urgency ended up preventing us from reaching Camille and the rest of the group sooner. We would talk about power, and trust, and snowmobile fuel. But not that night. That night we ate steaming bear meat chili and bannock. We sat around the fire playing dominos and Fleetwood Mac on guitar. We all changed into dry clothes, and curled up in our sleeping bags and each other’s arms, grateful we had kept community. We had kept alive.

Later I asked Camille how she had felt that night, shaking in the cold, wet from the falling snow. “I was scared.” She said. “But I really couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t think about how long it would take for someone to come get us, or what would have happened if the snowmobile had broken down before the walkie talkie was in range or if we would need to spend the night out there. All I could think was eventually I’m going to get to put dry socks on and that’s going to be the best feeling in the world.”

In many ways my frenzied move across the continent to join a struggle I’d only read about on the internet was a lot more like Ethan’s frantic rescue mission than Lauren’s prudent strategizing. When I decided to go in the first place it was because I felt like everything that was happening around me was too small. I wanted to feel like I was doing something that mattered, I wanted to save the world. I relate to Ethan’s instinct to drop everything and drive into a snowstorm on a snowmobile with no gas.

But if I’ve taken anything from those months on Unist’ot’en land it’s that the stakes are much too high to burn ourselves out in spectacular acts of ego-driven martyrdom. We have to build up structures of community and care to keep fighting for the long haul. We have to strategize with intention and focus on taking care of each other if we want to survive.

After the snow melted, we began construction on a Healing Center which since 2015 has helped Wet’suwet’en community members address the traumas of colonization through culturally-safe care and access to ancestral traditions and language. The Unist’ot’en people are not just fighting against the capitalist, colonial fossil fuel industry, they are building the world they need directly in its path.

These days, as I try to build community and fight for justice where I am, that is what I hold onto: the feeling I had on Unist’ot’en land of knowing that the world I have been dreaming about is possible. Not only that, but there are moments of refuge, cracks in the world order, where it is already here. If I can recognize, celebrate, share, and create these moments then I am less likely to lose myself to despair and more prepared to keep fighting. I am less likely to be held hostage in inaction by my own failure to imagine just how wonderful this world could really be. After all, if these moments are already possible, what else is already possible?

Sometimes these flashes of realized liberation are big and dramatic, like successfully keeping the police off the land after a tense showdown, or getting everyone safely home in a snowmobile rescue mission. More often I feel possibility in softer moments – Wet’suwet’en elders sharing ancient traditions like walking the trapline, and new ones like using moose meat to make savory oatmeal; guitar jams after a day of incredible stress, and guitar jams after a day when nothing much has happened at all; thanking the martens as we remove them from the traps for skinning, making mistakes and helping each other process them with compassion, getting into snowball fights while shoveling cabin rooftops.

And of course, I feel possibility in sleeping bag socks, laid lovingly next to the fire by a friend so they’ll be perfectly warm when you need them. After a day of fear, and cold, and uncertainty, putting on dry socks really is the best feeling in the world.

To learn more about or donate to Unist’ot’en Camp please visit https://unistoten.camp

[1] In 2019, several years after the events of this essay, Coastal GasLink bulldozed through the heart of an important trapline.