[leadin]Before an expedition, explorer Will Steger would cut the handle off his toothbrush. He left notebooks behind when heading to the Arctic, writing journal entries on the back of maps.[/leadin]
“Steger is the ultimate minimalist, nothing extra, no waste.” Eric Dayton is telling me this story. At age 23, right out of college as an English major in 2004, Dayton spent six months and 2,000 miles with Steger. The Arctic Transect was his “first real job,” Dayton says, and the dogsled expedition molded him as a young man. “But I kept my toothbrush handles on.”
A toothbrush handle is a modicum of comfort on an expedition that Dayton wanted to keep. But during the trip with Steger, and on climbs and expeditions before and since, Dayton absorbed an ethic of efficiency; everything in its place, minimalism and focus, no extra ounces in the backpack or stowed on the sleds, pulled by dogs, coursing for weeks across the Arctic white.
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Downtown Outdoorsy
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