Life in a Snow Globe of Death

Snow has a way of softening the harshness of the world. When it dances to the ground in its gentle parade, it covers over the corners and lends beauty to even the most disagreeable of landscapes. Even the sounds are different, muffled, as though Nature herself is whispering hush, hush, be still, while she adorns all creation. Trees and mountains, homes and cities, all cocooned in the silvery mantle of winter. Beautiful.

Deceptive.

Deadliness covered over by quiet splendor. A siren song designed to crash the ship. At her loveliest, Nature remains glorious and unforgiving, eternally juxtaposing herself. Those who forget her capabilities may find themselves sacrifices on the altar of her brutality. They are those who, in the days of old, did not survive her.

Some still don’t.

When you live on the edge of the world, it takes willful ignorance to overlook the perils of Nature. I cannot afford to be unaware. I do not forget what I am dealing with. If I ever do find myself slowly being lulled into lethargy by the golden hues of a sunset, or the clarity of birdsong carried by the early morning mountain breeze, I am quickly reminded by the sweeping and sudden destruction of a summer storm, or the haunting scream of a mountain lion, that brilliance is met by death at each turn. One miscalculation, one moment of poor luck and you encounter the shadow side of Nature’s temperament. It is the contrast of the wilderness that makes it intoxicating for some. Some try and conquer it. Others wish merely to experience it, to behold trees older than civilization itself, or serpentine rivers that go from lazy to roaring in an instant. To bear witness and walk away enlightened, soothed, or energized.

Others simply want to survive.

Nature, for her part, doesn’t much care for motivations. She does not seek to destroy those who would see her tamed, nor does she defend those who would venerate her. She lets her axe fall in equal measure with her shield, capricious yet still tantalizing.

I fall among the number of those who only wish to survive their encounters with the natural world. My entire existence is now spent carving out one more day for myself, laboring from dusk until dawn to increase my odds of making it through tomorrow. At times, Nature seems to be working in tandem with my efforts. I have been out here long enough to know, however, that her favor never lasts for long.

How long I have been here, I do not know. Long enough for my hair, from what I can tell in the mutated reflection of a pond, to become streaked with grey. Long enough for my bones to ache in the cold. Long enough for my hands to look like a strangers’, tanned and wrinkled and calloused. Long enough.

When I left, my hair was an unbroken sheet of dark brown. My hands were smooth, delicate. I was young and resilient. I made the decision to leave in a split second and I never bothered to look back or give thought to what drove me away. I drove west, then north, deserts and towns and people passing by in a blurry haze. Rivers, rain, predators and mountains safely traversed in a shell of metal and glass. I stopped only for gas or food, sometimes for a few hours of sleep. I could never afford to stop for long. After a few weeks my money ran out. So did the gas. I left my car, mine not by right of purchase but rather the effort of acquisition, by the side of an empty highway. And I started walking. I timed it unintentionally well. I left early summer, and by the time I was proceeding on foot, it was still warm throughout the night. The terrain was difficult at times, but back then I was close enough to developed society that Nature was not fully queen of the domain, though her threats and melodies beat an incessant undercurrent to my travels. When I needed food or supplies beyond what I was able to scavenge along the way, I would venture into towns. I studied the bears and racoons, creatures that belonged to Nature but who had adapted to benefit from the waste of humanity. I stole from clotheslines, and broke into stores, trying to take only what I knew was necessary. It worked, for a while. Until it started to get colder. And towns became more and more scarce. Gradually, I was forced to acclimate to the harshness of a landscape uninterrupted by constructions or manmade provisions of any kind. In a way, it was a relief. I didn’t have to hear the distant laughter of children, or music, or anything else I had left firmly behind me. Memories faded, taking the pain with them, leaving behind a dull emptiness in their wake. After a while it was just me, and Nature, predictable in her unpredictability, falling into an uneasy rhythm of survival. Seasons passed, and passed again. I brushed with death, and I learned. Somewhere along the way, I grew old. I do not know if that is a regret or an accomplishment.

This winter has been more brutal than winters past. Or I am losing my hardiness. Either way. I only venture out of my rudimentary shelter, and away from the life-sustaining warmth of my fire when absolutely necessary. I have memorized where the dangers are, where Nature has attempted to hide from me her perils with a downy fleece of white. I make my way to the frozen pond, dodging her traps, and I can almost hear her laughter. You know I had to try. I know she did, and I do not blame her.

I reach the edge of the pond and pause. I have lived alongside wild beasts for long enough to have picked up some of their senses. Nothing looks amiss, but something has awakened an apprehensive voice in my head that puts me on high alert. I watch, wait, listen, for a long time. Nothing. Finally, I go about my work, keeping one eye on my surroundings as I break the ice and fill the bucket with water. Finished, I look back once more out over the icy waste of the pond’s surface. I notice movement under the ice, seemingly progressing towards the surface, perhaps a fish unaware that a glacial barrier exists between its world and mine. Not necessarily unusual, I think to myself.

Until I realize that it is the unmistakable shape of a human hand that strikes the ice from the depths of the frozen water below.