It is easier to watch Ray now, though I find it increasingly hard to bear. In the beginning, it was difficult to catch him unawares; it felt as though his eyes were always upon me, waiting, watchful, sometimes calculating, sometimes measuring, often filled with what I still foolishly tell myself was a kind of satisfaction, a fleeting variation on contentment. Ray watched me eat, sleep, care for the dogs, repair the sled, watched me through all of the relentless mundane tasks that mean survival here. His gaze was a constant source of heat at which I warmed my hands, whether we were out on the ice, or digging in against a sudden storm, or in the dark, at night, in our tent.

Much of it was curiosity, of course, part of his determined effort to learn what he needed to know to conquer this new and unfamiliar challenge I had thrust upon him, to ascertain the unwritten bylaws of this frozen wilderness. Still, I remember his eyes those first few weeks, so filled with warmth, so blue when he laughed, so often intense and fraught with meanings that I was both desperate, yet fearful, to decipher completely. I would harvest the contemplation he conferred upon me throughout the day with awkward appreciation and a hidden greed, hoarding the best of the day’s anthology of expressions for later recall, when I would take them out, in the quiet darkness of the tent and replay them, over and over, trying to elicit every meaning. Was he happy, I would ask myself? Was he finding what he needed in our adventure, in our shared efforts, in me?

He was reckless during those first few weeks, with a wild edge like the dogs, straining at some harness I could not see, and I told myself that Chicago had blunted his better instincts, that he was eager to free himself from what he had known, eager for change, eager to adapt, to redefine himself. That the anarchy of retreat, flight, can sometimes resemble the enthusiasm of advance did not occur to me, or if it did, I turned a blind eye to it, eager for my own part to see what I wanted to see, eager to find a partner in the life I was beginning to imagine for myself.

Ray found my own attempts to study him...what? Disconcerting? Amusing? Neither of these, I suppose, and yet somehow both. If our eyes met he would look away quickly, ingrained reflex, then back again, and his jaw would set, silently daring, until one of us, usually me, would finally look away. Perhaps it was proof of my own emergent brand of recklessness that I began to set myself against my fear and hold my course, return his scrutiny, becoming less and less concerned with what he might discover in mine than in reaping the secrets of his.
 
His eyes became even more beautiful, and more terrifying, when we dared to step across the unspoken boundaries we had always accepted, when we risked replacing what we were learning with sight with the more direct communication of touch. To my astonishment and joy I found that I…fit, to use Ray’s vernacular, and those brief weeks that followed were like the calm after a whiteout, the world suddenly peaceful and silent and still. I remember we slept a great deal at first, and that Ray laughed easily, and more often, and that for perhaps the first time in my memory, he lost the restlessness that was so innate, so much a part of him as his DNA.

Perhaps if I had been more observant, if I hadn’t been seduced from the pleasure of watching him to the incarnate joy of touching him, I would have recognized the moment when his tranquility began to unravel, when his belief in himself (in me?) began to waver. Perhaps if I had, I could have adjusted our course, made some provision for his creeping doubt, shored up his diminishing reserves. As it is, I only know that at some point I realized his restlessness had returned, infused with more frustration than enthusiasm, more anger than excitement. As time passed I realized my mistake, of course, though when I had finally discerned what was happening it was much too late for either my clumsy attempts to improve the situation, or my contrition, to make any difference. I have often felt constrained by the assumptions others make about me, painting me in broad simplistic strokes of duty and responsibility, believing that their assumptions give explanation to my motives, my allegiances, the choices I have made. I was ashamed to realize that I had committed a similar sin with Ray, leeching the real significance from his endurance by recasting his fears into something comfortable, familiar, by slathering my own brand of whitewash over his surfaces. My own belief in our intimacy as ordained, my own determination to give surety to our relationship, affected my judgment. I refused to understand that this unfamiliar territory, both real and private, was challenging to Ray on a deeper level than I imagined, that for him there was no resonance, no connotations of homecoming. That perhaps he would have eventually allied himself with the changes I had made to his life is possible, had I understood how significantly these changes had shifted his own perceptions of himself. As it is, I told myself that Ray’s fears were transitory, based on his sometimes treacherous lack of self-worth, and that by dismissing his fears as such I could hasten his acceptance of what we had become. I could not have made a more disastrous mistake.

It is easier to watch him now, now that his eyes have turned away. Now, he looks everywhere but at me: at Dief, at the horizon, at the quickly dimming light and the signs of another approaching winter. He will be gone before it has a chance to settle in. I would not have thought it possible but his recklessness has grown, though now his edges are ragged, torn, frayed by circumstances he will not accept but refuses to stop trying to change. He has been cut too often by the sharp edge of his own defiance, by my lack of understanding, by our mutual inability to survive this ultimate challenge intact. He is bleeding inside, though he refuses to show it; his face has gone flat like the icy surface of a lake, with all the rushing current hidden below. He has lost himself, and I have lost him.
But Ray is not a coward. He is, in fact, one of the bravest men I've ever known, and I know he will regain his focus, find his place again, his footing, despite this treacherous impasse I’ve somehow precipitated. He will find his way back, back to himself and to the world, and when that happens the light will return to his eyes. But for now, they look elsewhere, away from me, to the south, due south. And it is easier to watch him now, when he is looking away, though perhaps harder to bear, as I realize he is looking towards home.