Twenty Below

12Aug2021

Word Count 2,340

Twenty Below

by

Knox Whitney

One

    “We could go snow camping.”

He eyes her over his paper, over his reading glasses, over the round oak breakfast table he’d built just for her.

“Where are you thinking?”

 “Haven’t thought. We’ll know it when we see it.”

  “It’ll take me a day to get the RV in shape.”

     “That’s not exactly what I have in mind.”

    She sips her latte and tries not to smile too big.

    “How about a real snow-camping experience? 

 Stephen waits. Says nothing. Fixes her in the warmth of his gaze.

He always does that: Just waits. Makes himself into a still, quiet

pool…adds magnets, or something: Utterly irresistible.

    She can never do enough for him. It is one of her missions in life

to make sure that Stephen knows that he is truly, boundlessly,

extravagantly loved.

    She can tell he doesn’t know what’s coming. In her mind’s eye,

she’d like to throw out the bait, to slowly reel him in, to stretch it all

out, but…

    “Go look in the trunk of the Benz!”

    Soon, they’re packing boxes of groceries, water…thermoses, extra

car blankets. They load the Leicas with film - color, and black and

white; they assemble a few lenses of varying lengths and speeds,

move the camping gear from the cavernous trunk of the old diesel

Mercedes into the spritely Toyota. 

Headed west!

    On a skiing trip a few weeks prior, they’d taken one of Stephen’s

beloved Benzes, but the diesel gelled up while they were driving.

That’s how cold it was. So this time they take Helen’s Celica.

    It’s cold now, too…Colorado cold, complete with a blue at its fullest

sky.

Two

    By nightfall, they’re skirting Tarryall Reservoir, just east of the

Lost Creek Wilderness area, off Road 77. They’re looking at a vast

tabula resa at 9,000 feet, surrounded by cardboard cut-out

mountains, back-lit in cobalt - in cobalt and black, to be exact.

Lost Creek. Well, that fits…good thing we don’t mind being lost…!

Helen laughs an inward laugh, wrestles with the flashlight and

map.

    “It’s so bleak! I wasn’t expecting this!”

    Stephen smiles.

   “This could take a while.”

    He drives carefully on.

    They munch on walnuts and raisins, share coffee and a sandwich,

strain to see through the sumi-ink night.

    “It’s just so…so…empty! It’s going to be extra-dark!”

    “Wow! Not a destination! But here we are!”

    If Stephen is worried, it doesn’t show.

    Not knowing is the best!

    Helen double-checks herself: Yes. Ultra-alert.

    The lake is clearly unprotected, frozen over, windblown, and

recently snowed on.

    Eventually, they find a small, partially wooded area off the road

and out of the wind.

    Out in the middle of nowhere.

“Looks like this is the best we can do.”

Stephen stops the car, carefully walks the terrain, then drives

close to the little stand of pine.

No ravines. No hidden, car-wrecking rocks – no carcasses, no

boulders. No surprises.

    “Here. We’ll be out of the wind.”

Silently, together, they pitch their tent in the light of the full-

beams, double-check the tie-downs, and move in. They know the

drill. They have been here before, just not in this particular place,

and not in this particular season, and not with these particular

challenges. But they have been here, together, before.

    Morning will be quite a revelation. It always is when you pitch

your camp in the dark. A light snow falls.

Helen knows it sounds like a crazy thing to do. She can just hear

old Mr. Sorensen, Stephen’s steel-fabricator friend:

    “Why would anybody want to sleep out in the snow, and in the

middle of winter, too! That’s just nuts!”

    In her mind’s eye, she sees him turn away, ruffle his watch cap,

and scratch his scraggly head. She hears his creaky shop door slam,

and not for the last time, either.

     But there’s more to it than that, Mr. Sorensen! It’s one of those ‘If

you have to ask, it’s doubtful you’ll understand the answer’ kinds of

things. Like Jazz! Mr. Sorensen! Like JAZZ!

    They load the tent, crawl in, and zip up the door.

Three

It’s quiet. Is this what they’ve come for?

Quieter-than-quiet quiet, in nature?  It’s not quiet in a human-

construct sort of way…not quiet in a funny-smell, sound-proof room

sort of way, and probably not in a sensory-deprivation tank sort of

way, either.

It’s a snow-falling-on-snow quiet, a soft, feathery whisper-in-

the-night quiet, and it’s a certain stillness, too.

Helen burrows, cold, deeper and deeper into her sleeping bag,

wishes for zip-togethers instead of solos. 

How did this happen, anyway? I ordered zip-togethers! Next time,

I’ll check while I’m still in the store! 

Now, she checks her self, too. 

She made a rule for herself a long time ago: No complaining! No

complaint!

One day, while sitting in meditation, she’d realized:  It’s time to

still the voice of my own complaint! She does so now.

It’s a hard habit to break. But it’s worth it.

She closes her eyes, looks into the black. Check. I see black. She

pokes half her head out of the sleeping bag with her eyes open. She

looks. Check. I see black.

She wonders what sees. She wonders who sees.  After all, some

blind can see, some deaf can hear…

She snuggles back down in her bag. She listens and listens. Snow

is still falling on snow. She’s in love with listening…She’s in love with

hearing…She’s in love…

ZIIIIIIIIPPP!

A scratchy sound rents the air. It’s extra-loud.

Incredible! It’s incredible! It’s cold! It’s cold! We’re in the middle of

nowhere! Is someone – somehow - opening the door of the tent? Or is

Stephen…

A laugh wells up from her deepest deep.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!

“I’m hot...Taking off my jacket.”

    “You’re WHAT???  You’re ­HOT!!!”

    She feels semi-hysterical. 

    She’s trembling from the cold, and shaking with laughter.

    Or is she shaking from the cold and trembling with laughter? 

    She can’t even tell.

    “I’m FREEZING! I’m FREEZING! Here! Here! Give it to ME! Give it

to ME!”

    Her arms flail around in the sumi-ink dark; they reach for the

invisible jacket. Stephen, the man with naphtha running through his

veins, hands it over. She knows he’s smiling. She also knows how

gladly – how thoroughly - he would warm her up if he could. Alas.

    She adds the jacket to her many layers. She disappears into her

sleeping bag. Sausage Girl can barely move.

    Who thought this one up, anyway?

    She closes her eyes again and holds Tree Question in mind: If

a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear…

    But the last thing she hears before sleep is a disembodied voice –

close, very close, and full of merriment, saying, “I’m hot.”

Four

    Her green eyes open to the Blue-Vishuddha-Blue glow of an

azure tent drenched in sunlight and silence. She’s alone. Stephen’s

bag is empty. One of the camera bags is missing. She’s happy,

knowing he’s out there, out there somewhere, playing in the snow,

playing with the cameras, playing with the creatures, playing… She

can’t wait to hear…

Meanwhile, an airy snow-crystal snow falls inside the tent.

     Wowza!

Actually, in the night, it had snowed for only a few hours. Then

the temperature dropped, and it snowed no more.

By then, Helen was asleep, snuggled deeply and warmly into The

Dream, on the cusp of a world where she might one day more fully

inhabit her absence.*

After a time, her eyes find one of the gallon jugs of water they’d

packed. It looks like it might be frozen solid. (It is).

Oh My God! Oh My God! My boots! My boots! 

    Next to the water jug sit the frozen boots. They look like they

belong in a Van Gogh painting. Clearly, she has somehow managed

to break the “Boot Rules,” along with the “Sleeping Bag Rules.”

Always put your boots in the bottom of your sleeping bag, or keep

them on.

    Now, her bladder aches, and the urgency is immediate, and

somehow confusing. She’s stressed. Really stressed.

    I have on two layers of wool socks…it’ll probably be okay. I can go in

the bag…Nah. Don’t think so…Walk in the snow in my socks? Not

doing it.

    The bag is toasty, and she is loath to leave it, but she has to act –

now! She flies out of the bag, grabs the boots and jams her feet

in. She doesn’t lace them up. Within seconds she is sprinting into

the woods.

    How could I forget the Boot Rules like that?

Minutes later, she’s ducking back into the tent, diving for the

sleeping bag, but it’s too late. The frozen boots have tipped the

fragile body temp scales in a wrong and deadly direction.  

    Suddenly, she’s beyond weak. She feels herself sink slowly to the

soft floor of the tent. She spies the collapsible stove on the way

down. She wants to light it, but her limbs are imaginary - merely

imaginary, slow-motion swimmers, swimming nowhere.

    Her eyes are open. Soon, she’s completely listless. A sweet and

gentle sleep calls and calls.

Is this the last look

in the last glow

of the last blue tent,

where the last of the

snow-crystal snows,

...falls? 

    Then, she hyper-feels her heart: boom-BOOM, boom-BOOM,

boom-BOOM. She feels her face on fire.

    Fire is the first element to leave the body when the body dies.

    Suddenly Stephen is there – a surreal blur of know-how and

activity - a thousand arms, moving in a thousand directions; a

thousand hands doing a thousand things…

    Suddenly, her feet are under his armpits. Suddenly, he’s speed-

rubbing her limbs, her torso, her heart, her hands. He’s cooking

something.

“Helen! Your face is crimson!” 

After a time, he kneels firmly on one knee and props her up

against the inside of his left leg. Her head is throbbing and

everything hurts whereas before, nothing did. Soon, she’s sipping

hot broth and experimenting with simple motion – The Slow

Movement of Various Parts of the Body Electric. 

They eat in silence. She eats as much as she possibly can.

If I can just get my metabolism working…

“We’re getting out of here.”

 He says it quietly, but firmly.

Five

    They strike the tent and pack the car. But getting back on the

road isn’t so easy. Trusty Toyota won’t start. They scoop snow out

from under Celica’s oil pan. Stephen fires up the alcohol stove

again. He heats up Toyota’s oil pan. It works, of course, and she

starts. Most anything Stephen does, works. It is part of his genius,

his immense attraction - his brilliance, and his charm.

She always feels so safe with him. Is.

Six

    Despite the morning’s impairment, the day is far from lost. As

they make their way back past the reservoir, towards home, Helen’s

strength returns. The lentil stew, the hot coffee, the buns, the

potatoes, the broth they’d managed, coupled now with the warmth

of Toyota’s heater, all add up to calories and renewed resolve.

    “What say we work on the White-on-White project? If I get weak,

we can always call it a day and head for home! We’ve come all this

way...”

        Stephen smiles. 

       “Let’s give it a try.”

       He turns the car around.

      They park at the edge of the lake: As far as the eye can see, a

snowfield of diamonds. The sun shows clear in a cobalt sky. There’s

not a soul in sight, not a car on the road - just solitude and silence.

     The White-on-White project is a favorite. It’s a series of

photographs that explore the Zone System, in

only found shades of white - outside, in nature. 

    An abandoned marble quarry near Canon City had been an

excellent find, as well as the quarry above Marble, Colorado - the

same quarry that supplied the marble for the Lincoln Memorial and

the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C., and for

parts of the State of Colorado’s capitol building as well.

    Now this: 886 total acres, 175 of them a frozen lake. 

    Right away, the little dramas on the reservoir reveal

themselves: Rabbit tracks, followed by coyote tracks - blood in the

snow at the end – a mingling of fur and bone. 

    Her head is down as she treks, peering through the range-finder

of the Leica – the one loaded with black and white 35-mm

film. She’s photographing rabbit tracks – white-on-white - in the

unblemished smooth of the snow, bracketing shots, when she

almost steps on a hapless Mountain Cottontail, camouflaged and

burrowed in…snug in the ice and snow.

    Rabbit startles. Steam rises from the burrow. 

    Rabbit hesitates…moves away in slow motion, casts a tentative

glance over a small, frail shoulder.

    I won’t hurt you! I won’t hurt you! Come back! Come back! It was an

accident! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!

    Helen gently retreats, slowly walks backwards - silently

summoning the Cottontail, back to the warmth of the still-steaming

burrow.

Little Rabbit! Little Rabbit!

Is this your last look

At the last light

Of the last lake,

Where the last diamonds

Sparkle, so brilliant in the

Sun?

Come back! Come back!

But Rabbit does not obey.

    She looks up. They are under a sky impossible to fathom, in a vast

and sparkling realm of brilliance, and diamonds, and light.

Seven

    Driving home, they learn from the radio that the temperature had

dropped to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit the night before - the

night of their snow-camping trip in the blue tent. It seems like a

long time ago.

    They both know that Stephen has saved her life, but they don’t

talk about it.

Now she is beholden to him forever - for saving her life. Now, she will be saving

his life someday...

Or has she saved it already?

The End

­­_____

*Tribal songs rise, rifling the stars. Here/at the edge of heaven, I inhabit my absence. Poem: excerpta from Night by Tu Fu, translated into English by David Hinton.

Twenty Below © Pamela W. Haines, August 12, 2021