Her First Snow

“The weather guys said heavy snow overnight.”

“I heard they’re closing down all the highways. How many cars do you think they’ll have to dig out tomorrow?”

“Haha, I bet at least seven off of 50 alone. Those city folks always think they know better than -”

There is a brief moment of static while the woman switches the station before some new pop song comes on. This is why she has never moved out of San Jose: everyone else is so mean. The sun slants lower to her left, and she moves the visor to block it again. She has already left the highway and is now carefully threading her way around beautiful valleys on a tiny two lane road. The motel should be just up ahead, according to her phone.

Although she has been to Tahoe a few times in her life, it was always during the summer when she could enjoy the beautiful beaches and swim in the lake. For the past few years she has been saving up to visit during the winter so she can finally see snow for the first time. And that is why, even though the employees told her to head back home before the storm, she instead turned to the North and is on her way to some tiny motel in the middle of nowhere. She’s going to spend her last night there, see some snow in the morning, and head back home.

The sun has set by the time she reaches the motel and her headlights illuminate the small sign. She actually missed it at first and needed to turn around. Thankfully there were no other cars on this road; actually, she’s pretty sure she hasn’t seen another car for the past few hours. She parks in the parking lot next to the main building and gets out. The cold wind whips her hair around, bites at her cheeks, and steals her breath away. She is so excited for tomorrow morning.

However, the motel doors are locked, and, now that she looks around, there are no lights on, no cars in the parking lot. “Damn hicks, never updating their Google Maps listings,” she thinks as she climbs back into her car. A quick check of the map shows only two other places open. She calls both, with no response.

“Guess I’m staying in my car tonight,” she thinks. Nothing can dampen her excitement for tomorrow, and she just decides that tonight is her first foray into camping. She has always wanted to try camping, but she can’t get time off reliably enough to book the required six months in advance. She thinks about staying in the motel parking lot, but that wouldn’t really be in the true camping spirit, now would it? She pulls back on the dark road and drives off to find a more scenic spot.

After her dinner of beef jerky, water, and the rest of her burger from lunch (not as good as In-N-Out, but still decent), she crawls into the back seat to get comfortable. She turns off the overhead light and the car is plunged into complete darkness. The swiftly moving clouds have completely covered the sky, and there are no lights for miles around. She struggles to get to sleep without the familiar streetlight glow and murmur of cars to soothe her, but eventually she drifts off.

She wakes up shivering in the early morning, wishing she had a blanket with her. Outside, the storm has already passed and everything is blanketed in a thick layer of snow. The moonlight glistens over the mountains and she is awestruck at this supernaturally beautiful sight. She turns on the engine and cranks the heat to max, before deciding to step out into the snow. Opening her door is a challenge due to the waist deep snow, but she manages to at least force it enough to squeeze through. Walking through the snow is fun at first, but she is quickly exhausted and soaking wet. “Maybe snow isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” she thinks. Crawling back into her car, she strips off her sopping clothes and changes into a new set before curling up in the back seat, exhausted. The car has warmed up comfortably by now, and she quickly drifts off to the familiar sound of the engine.

She wakes up again with the sun shining in her eyes. The car is so fogged up that she can barely see anything through the windows. She once again pushes open the car door to step out into the new day. Immediately, the cold grips her, making yesterday’s chilly evening and night feel like a summer day. As she tries to catch her breath, the wind blows tiny snow eddies all around, swirling off the mountains before disappearing out of sight in the valleys far below. She figures out how to breathe in the freezing air and is amazed at the frozen white puffs her breath makes. The warm car has melted some of the snow around it, making it slightly easier to move around.

Although the sun is shining brightly, the woman cannot feel any warmth from it on her face. The wind teases and bites her exposed cheeks and steals the feeling from her nose. She tries making a few snowballs and tossing them around, until her hands, too, have lost all feeling. She explodes into gleeful laughter at the wondrous world around her. This was all worth it.

She spends only fifteen or thirty minutes outside before she is chilled to the bone and retreats back into the safety of the car and her last set of dry clothes. Checking the fuel meter, she realizes that the car is almost empty after running for much of the night. She finishes off the rest of her beef jerky for breakfast (she’ll have to get more for the drive back) and pulls up her phone for directions to the nearest gas station. Her phone, too, is low on charge and she digs around in her pack for a bit before deciding she must have left her charger back at Tahoe. She’ll get a new one at the gas station.

She turns on the radio again and flips through some stations for a minute:

“- coldest day of the year today. That storm brought the cold air with -”

“- already pulled three cars off of the roads this morning. CHP is desperately urging -”

“- all roads have been closed and people should stay home and -”

“- worst storm in years. I had to attach a plow to my truck just to get into the -”

She finally finds a station that is playing some music, and she tries to pull into the road. The car shudders for a moment as the tires spin in place before she lets off the gas. She tries again, flooring the accelerator. The small blue Prius desperately tries to get some traction on the wet ground before the wheels catch and the car jerks forward.

Last night, the woman had struggled to find a suitable “camping” spot, and she had finally settled on a patch where the road slightly widened, pulling off to the side. In the morning, she can see that she parked on a small flat spot next to a relatively small drop: only ten or fifteen feet as opposed to the one to two hundred foot drops into the many valleys. As the car suddenly jerks forward, it pulls sharply to the right and the wheel slips through her frozen fingers. She grabs it and tries to correct the turn, but the car is already pointed down the small drop. As it rolls forward, she slams on the brakes, but the car continues to slide down the hill.

The car plows through the deep snow down the hill and comes to a rest at another somewhat flat landing above the deep valley. The woman’s breathing is ragged with fear and she sits still for a few minutes, waiting for the car to continue falling to her death. However, it seems the snow has managed to stop the car for good this time. Although she sits only a dozen feet off the road or so, she can barely see back up the hill.

After a few minutes of processing what just happened and calming herself down, she decides she needs to call for help. She dials 911 and waits, but the phone refuses to ring; there is no signal this deep in the mountains. With no other real options, she realizes she must wait for CHP or a plow to come find her. And so she waits.

It’s almost an hour before her car runs out of gas. She turns it off and continues to wait. After another two and a half hours, her phone runs out of battery. She continues to wait. The sun slowly moves across the sky; its bright rays feel mocking as the car continues to cool down. Sometime after the sun starts to move back down towards the mountains, she begins to shiver. Deciding to put on some extra clothes, she digs in the backseat before remembering that all her other clothes are still soaked from frolicking in the snow.

The sun is setting and it is beautiful. The red glow is reflected off the snowy landscape and the only sound is the wind whistling outside, trying to find a way into the closed off car. The woman, however, can only focus on how hungry and thirsty she is. She hasn’t been able to feel her hands for a while now, and her nose is bright red with a white tip in the rearview mirror. She has already cried a few times, but she is too dehydrated to really cry much more. As darkness blankets the snow outside, she again crawls to the backseat and curls into a ball to desperately try to stay warm.

She is unable to sleep due to the constant shivering, so she bolts up when, some time later, the sound of another engine rumbles through the car. Looking through the back windshield, she can see the lights of a plow driving along the curves of the road. Relief floods into her as she realizes that she is finally saved. She peers against the fogged up glass and watches as the plow moves closer and closer, finally slowing down as it approaches the curve she fell off of.

She crawls back to the front of the car and tries to push open the door, but it is buried in the snow. She shoves with all her might and manages to crack it open six inches or so, enough to try to poke her head out and yell at the nearby plow. As the plow passes overhead, a wave of snow cascades down the hill and onto her, falling into her hair, onto her neck, and down her shirt. She belatedly thinks about turning on the lights and twists the knob next to the steering wheel. The lights flick on, their bright flood beams reduced to a soft glow by the deep snow. She pulls the door closed, sits on the pile of snow that has spilled onto the driver’s seat, and watches the lights of the plow disappear around the next curve. When the car’s battery runs out in the early hours of the morning, she has finally stopped shivering and fallen asleep.