Years ago, I wrote about a mammoth black gum tree in our back yard that had been slowly dying back, limb by limb. It suffered slow demise when the ’08 ice storm crashed through our area. We hated cutting it down, but in so doing we avoided the danger of this recent winter storm where the weight of ice and wind left trees bestrewed at every possible angle. Like some weird postcard from Rome, split trees in our neighborhood look like ancient stone columns, that held up a coliseum archway before the Argonaut of weather came through and pushed them over.
Of course, like thousands of residents in this tristate area, we began hustling to stock up on groceries long before the worst hit us. As the thunder sleet storm built up, we knew we would soon lose power and have to begin the process of improvisation, that semi-quasi state of survival that doesn’t quite tip the desperate scale but still requires small doses of anxiety medication.
The problem I have with being snowed in, and the accompanying frustrations that it brings, is that I can never really settle into that rustic cabin romantic ambiance I see advertised in mountain retreats, lodges and ski resorts. Don’t get me wrong, I love looking at the pictures and the momentary fantasies they bring. I even imagine myself glissading down a hill, coming to athletic stop along a riverbed where a pride of caribou look up at me with curiosity.
Yet even when I have been in those types of places, sitting in a lodge with my hot chocolate and pebble sized marshmallows, I still cannot get in the mood of a wintry wonderland. I watch people stumble into the lodge, squinting and unable to adjust to the dim light, with faces looking red from snow burns they received as they face planted down the bunny hill. They stand there like statutes wearing neon thermal clothing, their small red “finder light” blinking on and off so they could be located if they were swept away by an avalanche. Imitating Norwegian soldiers, their snow suits are also covered with commemorative patches and logos that indicate that they were once part of a special branch of the Swedish military who just returned from guarding a fiord on the upper crust of their homeland coast. We know though, that no human has ever set foot on that coast, whose frozen beaches reveal only the white vertebrae of narwhals that lost their way.
Vacation skiers who walk in for some warmth, maybe some encouragement, are weighted down with cinder blocks boots, and appear as if they have survived something extraordinary out there. When they begin to thaw and are able to speak an hour later, they brag about how they whizzed through a pine forests, planted their poles and kept their weight on the inside. Sadly, their words are unintelligible because their lips are still frozen solid and crusty. Relaxing in an armchair on a Sundance couch, nobody who is sitting around has any idea what they are saying. Multi-syllable words sound like a baby beaver who lost its mother and difficult consonants like B, F, M, and P are never attempted at all. Last year, a downhill skier stumbled in and tried to speak, made the mistake of using too many “U’s and in so doing pushed her lips out too far. Paramedics had to be called in to help her, and when they ask her where she hurt, her lips fell off and lay quivering on the floor.
These are the things that happen when one is exposed to temperatures found only in meat lockers and cheap motels whose marquis are missing half of their letters. I have friends that return from ski trips and tell me all about their adventures on the slopes. I smile, of course, because that is what one does in polite society, but I have trouble getting past the obvious signs of their various injuries – a slight limp or broken nasal cavity, or loss of memory from high altitude oxygen deprivation. In addition, I feel embarrassed for them as they walk away with their ski passes, which melted in the dryer, are still stuck to their bottoms.
So, all of my guilt for not being more adventuresome in the snow and ice, of not having any inclination to head out and be an extra in the sequel to Jeremiah Johnson, where I might run into Mr. Redford himself – all of these feeling are gone now, completely replaced by a scene I recently witnessed, a treacherous scene just outside my daughter’s house, where her son Carter, five, was fighting for his life as he climbed a snow bank.
Lacking no imagination, Carter was pretending to scale the slick hillside as if he were in a documentary on mountain climbing. To the casual observer it would have only appeared like a scene of a child playing in the snow, but in Carter’s mind, it was a life-or-death attempt to reach an imaginary summit, possibly Mt. Everest.
And this will be the story we will read in a biography of his life many years from now:
“As he neared the summit, pickax in hand, little Carter, the only child to ever attempt a solo assault on Mt. Everest, felt his crampon slipping beneath the ice wall. He was losing his grip on the sheer sheet, an ice flow that never sees the sun, peering over his shoulder to look down into the mist. Below, was five feet of free fall down his front yard where his body would never be recovered. Could he make it to the top where only a few men have ever stood? He could see the flag a previous climber had planted at the peak – an image that would haunt him the rest of his life. Would he make it to the top and be able to take a selfie to show his own grandkids one day – that victorious moment when he planted his country’s flag and stood at the top of the world?
His thoughts filled with doubt. A memory of his grandpa flashed through Carter’s mind, a memory of a short, slow-witted man who had tried, valiantly, three times, to climb this same mountain. The record books say four. However, during the last attempt he had only one leg, having lost the other from an attack by a deranged Yeti in Nepal. After that, his homeland of Scotland would not recognize him as a legitimate explorer and they refused to enter his last climb in the Everest record books. Carter thought of this, and more, as insecurity swept over him.
The barely visible flag, that magical goal floating above him in the clouds, had faded from view and Carter lost his grip, and felt the snow give way beneath him on the treacherous ice.
‘Use your sticks,’ he heard his grandfather saying, ‘use the sticks!’
Yes, he thought, those ancient scrimshaw walrus tusks he had put in his jacket at the last second. Plunging one into the snow, Carter held on, then pulled himself forward and up, then stretched once more and plunged another tusk deep into the ice. Upward he inched, stab by stab, feeling the power of the carved symbols and figures surge through him as he strained towards his elusive peak.”
‘I can make it,’ he yelled even as his strength appeared to be giving out, ‘I’ve got to hold on and keep trying…’
And it will be there, in Chapter Fourteen of Carter’s biography, entitled “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Climbers,” where the five-year-old’s epic assault will comes to a sudden, suspenseful close.
As a family, we hope to read it all someday. For now, we helplessly stood at the living room window, watching him act out the entire scene. He looked like a taco wrapped in a blue cellophane, and he made one last attempt to pull himself up, but he was losing ground. It was hard to watch him fail, and listen to his scream of desperation, I have to tell you, as he aquaplaned helplessly downward. We could see his mouth moving, narrating the entire epic scene himself, playing all the characters, including the barely audible voice that trailed off the imagnary mountainside.
We want to believe he survived, yes we do. I don’t know the final chapter myself, because I haven’t written the book yet, but the last scene, of him reaching up that precarious slope, screaming, clawing at the white earth, made me proud. I knew I would see him again one day, but it wouldn’t be in a ski lodge or on a winter vacation in Aspen or Sun Valley. It would be in a photograph, where he will barely be visible through the clouds, and where on a bitterly frigid day, we witnessed the epic climb of one intrepid explorer from the safety of our toasty warm living room, far from any mountain.