Crazy for the Storm (19 page)

I
TURNED AWAY FROM
Sandra’s body, shielded by twigs, and surveyed the landscape. From the crash site I had mapped out this elliptical apron and the tight gulch below it. I had to control my descent down the apron and, hopefully, forge that gulch, then I would find the meadow and, below somewhere in the woods, the road that would lead me to shelter.

As far as I could see the apron was perfect for my energy-saving technique of sliding on my butt. Off I went. After a few minutes I realized that I was turning around markings in the snow—rock tips, bumps, animal tracks, anything—and that I was whooping as if it was a slalom course. This playful whim struck me as careless so I stopped whooping, went straight, only turning to control my speed.

Nearly a thousand feet later the slope tapered into the gulch and the sides of the gulch rose like two tidal waves of rock about to slam together. I was deep in its heart. The pitch got steeper
and I alternated between skimming on my ass and flopping onto my stomach to cleat the snow with my sticks.

As I descended, the terrain mutated into uneven rock mixed with snow, and the pitch tilted close to 35 degrees. It was too dangerous now. I had to stay on my belly.

Slowing down gave the gathering night a chance to overtake me. Each methodical step and fingerhold over the broken ground became a chore. Soon both sides pinched so tight I was forced toward the creek bed. I had sensed it down there in the crevice and wanted to avoid it at all cost. Getting wet would surely slow me down. Might give me hypothermia.

I noticed shrubs squeezing from the rock and decided it was worth taxing my strength to get to them. I used cracks in the rock, wedging my frozen fingers into them to traverse the dicey overhang above the creek. I got hold of the shrubs and lowered myself as close to the creek’s edge as possible. I was short by about two feet.

I eyed the transparent layer of ice coating the slurry of water that flashed beneath like schools of silver fish. Recalling how my dad almost froze when he had gotten wet during one of our backcountry powder adventures, I knew I had to stick the landing. Fall sideways, not backward, if you lose balance, I told myself.

Lowering my body, my hands slithered down the vine and I dropped. My feet plunged into the snow and I teetered backward. I forced myself to one side, landing on my hip, avoiding the creek. The buried foot did not release and I felt my knee tweak. I got up on my hands to relieve my knee. I pulled my feet out and started moving. The knee hurt but it worked.

The wall on this side was too vertical, and the bench of snow next to the creek was too narrow. So I jumped the four-foot-wide creek. The creek bench was only a foot wider on this side and I
had to descend on my hip, with my back to the creek, facing the gulch wall. Using nubs in the gulch wall to control my speed I slid down on my hip—an unproven technique. A mistake here would be disastrous. Don’t slip off this bench of snow, I warned. You’ll freeze and that’ll be the end.

I maneuvered my body into a chain of contortions, spidering the bench of snow between the gulch wall and the creek. A couple hundred feet lower I had staked out a landing site—a rock surface shaped like a bowl with no water in it. I hoped that either to the right or left of it there would be a needle hole through the bulwark of rock.

The tedium made my eyes dry and itchy, and I started to blink incessantly. Later I stopped in a good place and shut my eyes for a few minutes. Then I opened them to assess my progress. Not even halfway to that bowl-shaped rock, still over a hundred feet below.

I went back to the tedium of inch-by-inch, crag-by-crag, nail-by-nail progress. The minute details at my nose were my entire universe.

By the time I made it to the rock bowl it was noticeably darker. I scrutinized the clouds hoping they were the culprit. But they had dissipated in the gulch and hovered way up the sidewalls. Overcome with dread that ate away at my resolve, I succumbed to the numbness and exhaustion and hunger gnawing to be recognized. It hit me all at once and I plunked down onto the cold rock, whacking my chin against my knee. Just like when I rammed that gorge of a rut, I thought. If only I had wiped out during the race then I wouldn’t have won that stupid trophy, and we wouldn’t have gotten on the plane. This stopped my mind in its tracks and I rested down, as if to sleep.

I thought about my dad not allowing me to eat junk food. One particular time at my Pop Warner football team banquet, which Nick took me to, the coach tore open boxes of Snickers and Hershey and Three Musketeers bars and we all raced toward the feast. I had grabbed my favorite—a Three Musketeers—when my dad appeared out of nowhere. No way, Ollestad, he said. I cursed him and he told me he would always be there, even when I was sixteen on a date with a girl about to open a beer he would pop out from the backseat and say, Ah-ha!

Again my body reacted when my mind was too weary and I lifted up off the cold rock. I searched for the best way to proceed.

The gulch bent 90 degrees, leading toward a crack into a wider gully or canyon. But the rock floor just ended, a cliff for sure I thought. The other sides of the rock bowl climbed upward and integrated back into the massive ridgeline. I had to go wherever the gulch took me.

On all fours I crabbed backward, following the rock floor. Below me the rock was shiny with patches of ice and I had no reason to believe there would be anything to hold on to once I went over the edge.

As I approached the edge I lay on my belly. Feet first, I wiggled over the brim. It was a dry waterfall, except to my far right where a vein of water poured down the face. The throat of the waterfall was composed of icy rock blisters stacked vertically. At least in the chute I had a chance of avoiding a collision if I slipped, but here the waterfall emptied into slabs of big and pointed shale about fifty feet below me.

There was no decision-making process. I had to go. So I went. Using the curved sidewall and whatever cracks I could find along the face to leverage between, I spread my limbs horizontally. I wormed my way down the face crease by crease, my
numb fingertips and toe tips inexplicably culling the flaky holds and discovering tiny leverage points.

Then I dropped off the last icy rock onto the body-size chips of shale. I paused for a moment. The fog had lifted into the soupy clouds, I could see for hundreds of feet, and I was finally off the steeps. But I was running out of daylight. I took a couple breaths and labored forward. The meadow must be close.

M
Y DAD HUSTLED ME
to the Snow Summit lodge and we put all our ski stuff in a locker. Then we went to the bar to get Sandra.

When do I get the trophy? I said.

The ceremony’s tomorrow, President’s Day, he said.

But if I just get it now then we won’t have to come back, I said.

That’s not how they’re doing it, he said. Plus you can train with the team tomorrow.

We entered the bar and Sandra was pretty buzzed. She wanted to stay the night.

Little Norman’s got a hockey game, said my dad.

Well fuck, Norm, she said. Everybody stop. Just stop what you’re doing, she announced to the bar. This little blond boy has a hockey game so the world has to stop.

We’re leaving so come on, said my dad.

He turned and I followed him out the door. It was warm again and the clouds were gone. Looking over a far ridge, Dad thanked the storm for sending the cool air.

I guess we just caught the edge of it, he added.

Trailing behind us, Sandra cursed and bitched all the way to the Porsche.

There’s no fucking relaxing, she said. Go here. Go there. Go go go GO!

My dad reversed out of the parking spot, put the car in first gear and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

I’m glad we’re taking a fucking plane tomorrow, she said.

Me too, I said.

We’ll be able to see your championship run from the air, he said.

Cool.

Better take a catnap, he said. Big game tonight.

Okay, I said.

I curled up against the back window.

T
HE GIANT SHALE
moated by snow proved more grueling than I had anticipated. This terrain wasn’t nearly as steep and there was no ice or cliffs, but the gummy snow clutched my sneakers and I had to stand instead of slide, taxing my last reserves of strength. I was forced to bend and twist over the sharp uneven shapes, constantly losing my footing, entrenched again and again—an unpleasant reminder of my utter weariness and hunger. My stomach seemed to chew on itself.

Soon I had nothing left. I had no energy for a reaction, not even despair. I literally stumbled onto a tuft of snow that cropped up like a miracle. The giant shale seemed to melt away into this alluvial fan of snow like a turbulent stream feeding into glassy, slow water. I looked up, maybe for the first time in half an hour.

Two hundred yards downslope glimmered a pure white plate of snow—the meadow. It was partially eclipsed by intermittent hedges of buckthorn bush poking from the snow. I imagined
charging for the meadow but sensed that the fan of snow ahead was unstable—beneath it the buckthorn bush, crushed like mattress springs, was a trap. Sprouting out here and there, the bush looked like a decaying maze. I rehearsed weaving through it and onto the meadow. My eyes tracked the surface, sniffing out potential danger points. Right in front of me was a deceivingly firm snowdrift—a coil of buckthorn that would break underfoot. I identified a few more areas to avoid, then stood numb and fatigued, shivering from my bones outward. It was as if my cartilage and my ligaments had dried out and I wondered if I was going to break apart like brittle wood.

I leaned toward the meadow, drawn to it, a dehydrated animal spotting a water hole. My first step was Frankenstein-like. I heaved one leg out of the snow and lurched forward. My head was light as if there were no brain inside my skull. I wavered, unable to balance in the variable crust that changed to heavy cement and back to crust from one step to the next. I had to stop. Breathe. Find my balance.

Again I lurched forward. This time I let my momentum carry me downhill. When the snow turned soft underfoot I used my stomach to suck up my weight like skiing breakable crust or Sierra Cement with my dad.

As I hobbled down the fan of snow, my mind flickered with muddled images that burned under a Mexican sun. No emotion, just faint smeared orange and yellow colors—Me, Grandpa, Dad, swimming in an ocean as warm as a bathtub.

My eyes were closed when the crust broke wide open. I danced my weight to my other foot and it caved too. I jiggered laterally
and my magic ran out. I plummeted, knifing deep into the buckthorn. When I settled I was nearly entombed, only my head and one hand branching out of the snow.

I spit to clear snow from my mouth. I reached up with my free arm and the surface collapsed into my hole. My sneakers checked against the tangle of vines and I dropped a few inches deeper.

It’s like a tree well, I thought. I pictured my dad wedging his feet and arms against the sides and working his way up and out. I can do the same.

The vines gave way the instant I loaded against them. I willed my body upward and the limbs bent, worthless.

Some serrated leaves were still attached to the vine and when I moved again my ski pants and sweater pulled against the whole gnarl, quaking the snow around me.

Nothing was working, and nothing seemed like it would work. I was at the end of my tether. There was a flare of anger and frustration, abruptly smothered out, as if all the circuits in my brain were fizzling, and I shut down.

M
Y DAD WAS
in the bleachers at the beginning of the second period like he promised. He had taken Sandra home because she had refused to sit in the cold ice rink. Right off the drop I ended up with the puck and split the defense with a burst of speed up the middle. There was no one to pass it to and the goalie charged out of his crease and kept coming so I stick-handled left, tucked the puck in and reversed direction. The goalie’s body was going the wrong way and I slid the puck under his outstretched glove.

Nice move, Ollestad, my dad called from the bleachers.

My teammates gave me high fives and the coach kept me on the ice. By the end of the second period I had an assist to go along with my goal.

After the game some of the kids on the other team compli
mented my play and I went to bed that night feeling like I was on a good roll. I really am all those things Dad keeps saying I am. Good enough to beat the bigger, stronger kids. Tougher than tiger shit—maybe even tiger piss. And tomorrow I will have a championship trophy to prove it.

I
WAS PHYSICALLY AND
mentally parched, stuck in a hole, tangled in indomitable vines and semi-unconscious. Like something pushing through a thick jungle, I became aware of myself again. A vague idea rustled me—a few feet away was something to grab, a hedge. I began to see my surroundings again—the backside of the massive ridgeline was a crown of rock jutting forward like a ragged ship prow. I’m close, close to the meadow, I reminded myself. I could use my fingernails, lunge—I ran through strategies. In spite of these whispered calls to action I didn’t actually move.

I heard a noise overhead. I looked up and saw a big airplane belly. The fog had completely given way to a heavy graphite-colored sky. The plane banked and I used my free hand to wave at it. I kept my eyes glued to it.

Miraculously it circled around. I waved and watched it come back over the meadow again. I waved and yelled. They can see me. I’m saved. Then it sailed over the ridge. They saw me. That’s why they circled.

I waited for a long time and the plane did not come back and no one came to save me or called out for me. The wind sounded like voices and I yelled, but only the wind answered.

The graphite sky was edged in black—night was creeping in, maybe an hour away. I felt depleted again, woozy, bleary-eyed. I figured that my struggle was over and that I was going to die.