At twenty-two years old, foundering in grief and without a plan, I decided spontaneously that a year in a Siberian research camp would help me overcome the trauma of my mother’s death and cure the ensuing apathy toward my career in science. I stayed for three years. I did learn to bear the sadness and I did develop into a successful scientist, eventually, but I was unprepared for the emotional thrashing along the way that only a bleak wilderness and the few people who lived there could deliver. Upstream is the story of my struggle for purpose when the current was against me.