I didn't realize how badly I was lost until I tried to find the road again.
It had been beneath my feet only a short time earlier.
I remembered the packed surface.
I remembered the trees beside it.
I remembered being certain that I was going west.
Then I looked down.
There was snow everywhere.
No wheel marks.
No clear edge.
Nothing to tell me which way the road had gone.
I stood still.
The wind pushed against my back.
Snow struck my face.
I turned in a slow circle, searching for something familiar.
Every direction looked almost the same.
Trees.
White ground.
More trees.
And beyond them, a wall of blowing snow.
I told myself not to panic.
I had followed the road from Pinewood.
Surely it couldn't have disappeared entirely.
I took a few steps in the direction I believed it continued.
The snow grew deeper.
I stopped.
Perhaps I was walking off the road.
Perhaps I had already left it some distance behind.
I looked back.
My footprints were filling almost as quickly as I made them.
That was when I first became truly afraid.
Until then, I had worried about finding work.
About money.
About having nowhere to sleep.
Now those worries seemed strangely distant.
I had a more immediate problem.
I didn't know where I was.
And the weather was getting worse.
I tried to remember everything I had noticed since leaving town.
The slope of the ground.
The direction of the valley.
The way the trees stood beside the road.
I thought I could use those things to guide myself.
But every time I turned, the wind made the world look different.
I couldn't tell whether I was heading toward Greenwater or farther into the mountains.
I tried to be practical.
That was how Grandpa had taught me to handle problems.
Find what you know.
Work with that.
Don't waste energy getting angry at what you can't change.
I knew the mountains lay west of Pinewood.
I knew I had been climbing.
I knew the road had followed the valley.
That was something.
Not enough.
But something.
I continued walking.
The snow rose over the tops of my shoes.
Then it worked its way inside.
At first, I could feel the cold water against my feet.
Later, the feeling became dull.
I didn't understand how dangerous that was.
I only knew my toes hurt.
My fingers grew stiff.
I tried bending them.
The movement was painful.
I tucked my hands beneath the gray blanket.
The wool was damp now.
It gave me less protection with every passing minute.
I held it close anyway.
It was my mother's.
I wasn't ready to put it down.
The wind caught one loose edge and pulled it away from my shoulder.
I grabbed it before it slipped off.
The sudden movement made me lose my footing.
I stumbled.
My knee struck the frozen ground beneath the snow.
Pain shot through my leg.
For a moment, I stayed crouched there.
I was angry at myself.
I had been so certain that I could manage.
So certain that walking to Greenwater was better than paying for a room.
Now I was alone in the mountains, unable to tell which direction led back to town.
I wanted to cry.
But I was already struggling to breathe in the cold air.
I forced myself upright.
My knee ached.
I brushed the snow from my skirt.
Then I moved again.
There was nothing else to do.
I told myself that I would find a sheltered place.
A stand of trees.
A large rock.
Anything that might protect me from the worst of the wind.
Then I could decide what to do next.
But the farther I walked, the harder it became to think clearly.
I kept searching for landmarks.
A bend in the valley.
A familiar tree.
An opening between the slopes.
Everything appeared and disappeared behind the storm.
Sometimes I thought I recognized something.
I would move toward it.
Then, as the snow shifted, I realized I had mistaken one shape for another.
The uncertainty was exhausting.
I didn't know whether each step was bringing me closer to safety.
Or farther away.
I began talking to myself.
Not loudly.
Just enough to hear a voice.
"Keep going, Mary."
The wind swallowed the words.
I tried again.
"Find somewhere out of this."
It sounded simple.
Almost reasonable.
But there was nowhere to go.
My shoes were soaked.
My legs were growing heavy.
Every movement required more effort.
I had been cold before.
I had carried wood through winter weather.
I had stood outside helping Grandpa repair things when the air was sharp enough to make my eyes water.
But that cold had always been temporary.
There had always been a door nearby.
A fire.
A room where I could sit and recover.
This was different.
There was no door.
And I had no idea how far away the nearest one might be.
I reached for the bread in my bundle.
My fingers struggled with the wrapping.
I managed to break off a piece.
It was difficult to eat while I was shivering.
I swallowed what I could.
Then I put the rest away.
I had to preserve it.
I didn't know how long I might be outside.
That thought frightened me more than the hunger.
How long?
An hour?
All night?
Until morning?
I didn't know.
And not knowing made everything worse.
The light began fading.
I noticed the change gradually.
The white snow took on a darker color.
The trees became harder to distinguish.
I looked up at the sky, though there was little to see.
Night was coming.
I had spent the afternoon trying to reach another settlement.
Now I was facing darkness without shelter.
I walked faster for a few minutes.
It was a mistake.
My breath grew short.
My legs began shaking.
I slowed down.
I wanted to sit.
Just for a moment.
I wanted to stop fighting the wind.
I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I was back beneath the attic roof.
I could picture my bed.
The sloping ceiling.
The little space beside the wall where I kept my clothes.
I had never appreciated that room properly.
I had complained about how cold it became on winter mornings.
Now I would have given anything to be there again.
Even with Elias downstairs.
Even knowing he didn't want me.
I hated myself for thinking that.
Then I understood how frightened I really was.
I wasn't wishing for happiness.
I was wishing for a roof.
I staggered into a deep drift.
One foot sank farther than I expected.
I lost my balance and fell.
Snow filled my sleeve.
I tried to rise.
My hands slipped.
I pushed again.
My arms trembled.
I managed to get one knee beneath me.
Then I stopped.
I was so tired.
It seemed impossible that a person could become that tired simply from walking.
I lowered my head.
The snow was soft beneath my arms.
The wind sounded farther away than it had a moment earlier.
I remember thinking that if I rested for just a little while, I might have enough strength to continue.
Only a minute.
Only until my legs stopped shaking.
My eyes began to close.
And then I remembered Grandpa.
Not his face at first.
His voice.
The quiet way he spoke when I became frustrated over something I couldn't repair.
When I was young, I sometimes looked at an entire broken piece of furniture and decided the job was too difficult.
He would make me stop.
Then he would point to one part.
A loose joint.
A damaged board.
A bent nail.
He taught me to deal with the next thing I could actually do.
Not everything at once.
Just the next thing.
I thought about him sitting beside me.
I thought about the old stone wrapped in flannel.
And I realized that lying in the snow wasn't the next thing I needed to do.
Standing was.
I planted one hand against the ground.
Then the other.
My arms shook.
My knee hurt.
I pushed until I was upright.
I stood there breathing hard.
The trees swayed around me.
I couldn't see far.
I couldn't think about Greenwater anymore.
Greenwater might have been miles away.
It might have been behind me.
It didn't matter.
I needed shelter.
Somewhere close enough to reach.
I took one step.
Then another.
I concentrated on lifting my feet high enough to clear the snow.
I stopped trying to measure how far I had gone.
That only made me feel worse.
Instead, I watched the ground immediately ahead of me.
One place to put my foot.
Then the next.
Sometimes that was all I could manage.
I don't know how long I continued that way.
Time had become difficult to judge.
The sky was dark.
My body ached.
My fingers no longer worked as they should.
I kept walking because stopping frightened me more than moving.
Then something appeared ahead.
At first, I thought it was another tree.
A dark shape between two snow-covered pines.
I stared at it.
The wind blew snow across my face.
The shape disappeared.
Then it returned.
I moved closer.
It looked too wide to be a tree trunk.
Too straight along one edge.
I rubbed my eyes with the back of my sleeve.
Perhaps it was a rock.
I didn't care.
A large rock might block the wind.
That would be better than nothing.
I struggled forward.
A few steps later, I saw a line that made no sense in the middle of the forest.
It sloped downward at an angle.
I looked again.
It was a roof.
A roof covered so heavily with snow that it nearly blended into the hillside.
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Then I saw part of a wall.
Dark logs.
A crooked wooden shutter.
And above them, the shape of a stone chimney.
A cabin.
I whispered the word.
I was afraid to say it too loudly.
Afraid that I had imagined it.
But the building remained where it was.
Old.
Crooked.
Nearly swallowed by winter.
I had never seen it before.
I had no idea who owned it.
I didn't know whether anyone had lived there recently.
The roof sagged.
Snow piled against the walls.
There was no light in the window.
No smoke from the chimney.
It looked deserted.
I didn't care.
It had walls.
And a roof.
And a place where a fire might be possible.
I tried to hurry.
My legs couldn't manage it.
I stumbled through the snow until I reached the side of the building.
Then I dropped to my knees.
I remember touching the logs.
They were real.
Rough beneath my fingers.
Cold.
Solid.
I almost cried from relief.
I had found a building.
Not safety yet.
But something close enough to make me hope again.
I struggled around toward the door.
Snow blocked part of the entrance.
I pushed against the wood.
Nothing happened.
I pressed harder.
The door didn't move.
I tried pulling.
It stayed shut.
I put my shoulder against it and shoved until pain ran down my arm.
Still nothing.
The wood was frozen in place.
I stared at it.
A door.
A perfectly ordinary wooden door.
And I couldn't get through it.
After everything I had endured, the thought of being forced to stay outside because of a frozen door nearly broke me.
I tried again.
My shoulder burned.
The door refused to move.
I leaned my forehead against it.
"Please," I whispered.
There was nobody to hear me.
Nobody to open it from inside.
I knew that.
But I said it again anyway.
Then I remembered the crooked shutter I had seen from the trees.
I moved along the wall.
Snow caught at my feet.
I had to push through a drift that reached almost to my knees.
The shutter hung beside a narrow window.
Part of it was broken.
I grabbed the loose wood and pulled.
It shifted.
I pulled harder.
The opening behind it was small.
Too small to enter comfortably.
But it was an opening.
I brushed away the loose snow.
Then I tried to force myself through.
My coat caught on the rough frame.
I twisted.
The fabric tore.
I felt the pull across my shoulder.
For a moment, I thought I was stuck.
I pushed with my feet.
Dragged myself forward.
Then suddenly I fell through.
I landed hard on the wooden floor.
The air smelled of old timber and damp dust.
The room was dark.
I could barely see.
But the wind was outside.
I lay there listening to it.
For the first time in hours, it wasn't striking me directly.
I had made it into the cabin.
I was trembling so badly that my teeth hurt.
I couldn't yet feel safe.
I couldn't even sit up properly.
But there was a floor beneath me.
There were walls around me.
And somewhere in the darkness stood a stone fireplace.
I turned my head toward it.
If I could make a fire, I might survive the night.
That became the only thing I allowed myself to think about.
