Aspens
Bob had taken an hour to wrap his head around the crisis. Save for Kelsey lying next to him, there was not one aspect of his situation he considered encouraging. The farm, which had always been his happy place when he was clothed and mobile, was now life-threatening.
A lifetime spent seeing things as they were, keeping his mind open to all options, was now at risk because he had taken Mother Nature’s benevolence for granted. Eyes closed, cheek against the smooth, icy dent, he exhaled slowly. Breathing was his most potent tool.
Between two sharp waves of shivering, another thought emerged. Doubt, not freezing, was his immediate enemy. He considered that until the next big shake.
“Oh, that’s great, Kelsey. Being a giant icicle isn’t scary enough.”
Kelsey lifted her heart-shaped head that Bob loved so much and looked into his eyes without moving.
“Such a good girl you are.”
He placed his hand, spread wide, on her face, covering her eyes and snout. His thumb and little finger massaged the edges of her ears. The bite of the frigid night air had not yet stolen the feeling in this hand. The cold moisture of her nose and warm exhale against his wrist was a gift.
“I love you so much.”
It was close to midnight when the first qualms edged slowly into his internal dialogue. His body vibrated in response to a strong shiver. He couldn’t allow thoughts of doubt to find a home in his head. That’s the hypothermia talking.
“We’re gonna make it, girl, we’re gonna get out of here.”
He meant it. That would be his default game plan whether she believed it or not. He had to believe it. Bob felt the muscles on her head relax a little, maybe the result of his soothing voice or the safety of the bond she experienced when connected physically with him.
“Stay right here with me. We’ll be fine,” he said, rubbing her ears again. He wished he knew what she was thinking. Maybe I don’t want to know.
“You good girl. Stay here with me. It’s OK.”
Cars would pass after the New Year came in. Between the Moose Jaw revelers and home parties along the county roads, five or six vehicles might drive by. Two had passed already. Although the farm lay on a peripheral road, it connected two busier routes, and locals knew it shaved a few minutes off their drive.
He tried to think of ways to get the drivers’ attention, considering his limited options, but the pulsing through his body kept interrupting his thoughts. He was shivering nearly non-stop. The trembling paused for a few seconds between episodes. An image of waves against a shoreline was in his head. Many of the shivers were full-body tremors. Often they had a secondary pulse between them, less intense, like the heartbeat of a person with atrial fibrillation. Although the strong quakes took control of his thoughts once they started, they also delivered milliseconds of comforting warmth, or at least a distraction from the cold.
Nothing besides the feel of Kelsey’s neck, felt warm. Bob’s training in Boy Scouts and backpacking proved helpful; he knew his body was fighting the cold with the same intensity he was fighting it in his head. Knowing that made him feel a little better and reinforced his resolve to get out of this mess. He refused to accept he would die simply because he had been careless.
I’ll figure a way to get through it. Always have. Can’t help the body, but I have my brain. Breathe. Not tonight. Not here.
The position of his body and the limited motion he retained after the fall presented major challenges. He was not on his back, nor was he on his stomach. Bob’s shoulders were at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground; his right side, including that arm, was buried seven inches in the snow. The snow and ice packed beneath him deadened the creaking produced by even the slightest movement. Happy New Year.
The soundless space three feet from his front door was now void of the bliss he usually felt in the farm’s silence. He’d felt it six hours earlier as he moved six logs from the cordwood stack to the base of the stairs. That seemed like a long time ago. A juniper berry fell onto the house’s metal roof and made such a racket rolling to the edge; Bob thought it was a large spruce cone and braced for impact. It pierced the snow inches from Kelsey’s nose, making a hole the size of a BB. Kelsey never broke her gaze as Bob laughed.
“That giant berry almost got you, Kelsey.”
Although his head was partially free of the snow, his neck was pressed deep into it. Believing his brain needed warmth to keep functioning, he tried to lift his head out of the snow with some success. Bob’s family would later learn that when three vertebrae shattered into each other an hour ago, his body experienced a loss of function at varying levels. Bob did not consider paralysis for one moment. He couldn’t. Whatever it was, his motion would come back. He wondered why the pain in his shoulder, which he had ignored earlier, had eased a little in the first hour.
It was a small consolation, but he also feared the pain had gone away because his shoulder was now frozen solid. He lacked all mobility on that side of his body and had no way to test his concern. He was relieved to have nearly full use of his left hand, which was tucked deep into Kelsey’s winter coat. Kelsey made sure that hand was on her at all times. She pushed against him every few minutes, a personal welfare check. Each time she was rewarded with Bob’s reassuring voice.
“I got us in a hell of a deal, Kelsey. It’s OK. Rick will be here.”
He massaged her neck with his fingers.
“I wish I had a coat like yours!”
He began to realize he might be fooling himself about the chance of getting rescued that night. Stop it, he thought, commanding his brain to go a different direction.
“Kelsey, go get a flare!”
She jumped up, looked in each direction, and then back at Bob.
“I was kidding, you good girl,” Bob calmed her, “I’m sorry.”
A flare would definitely stop a car—would get them both out of the snow that night. The irony had not yet cut through the fog of his current mental state. Even if a flare from heaven should roll down the roofline like the berry and plop into the snow next to his hand, Bob no longer had enough tactile control to remove the cap and light it.
Bob did have a clear sense that time had slowed. Each minute seemed like five. He hadn’t accounted for how quickly the cold would weaken his resistance. Get me out of here. I’ll never complain about the cold, ever. Bob remembered advice he had read in a Zig Ziglar book: “A goal properly set is halfway achieved.” Need to set goals. They’ll buy time. I need time.
He understood hypothermia had begun to blur his symptoms. The cold he had felt an hour earlier seemed worse now. He could not feel his feet or the hand trapped under his right shoulder. He already suspected his right shoulder was an ice cube and had concerns about the left. Thanks to Kelsey, the left hand and arm stayed above freezing, but Bob could not move his left shoulder much. The more body parts that succumbed to the cold, the further he drifted from questioning why he couldn’t move in the first place. He needed to act before doubt stole the one useful tool he had left—his mind.
His position in the snow, on any night with moonlight, would afford him a dim view of a cluster of aspen trees, fifty yards out, due east. Cloud cover that night stole any chance of that. He enjoyed all the trees on his property but felt a deeper connection with the aspens. As aspens share one root system, every tree in an entire grove is a genetic copy of all the others. Each tree is but one part of a gigantic organism. They also grow year-round, even in harsh environments like northern Michigan.
“Oh, Kelsey, I want to be an aspen tonight.” Bob let that thought sink in.
The darkness was so intense, even the fence a few feet from him was indistinct. However, he knew exactly where the aspens were. He knew where everything was on the farm. Bob properly set his goal: He would see the morning light behind those aspen trees. He had seen dawn break through them hundreds of times. One more time.
He had set his first goal. It felt good. In that moment it did not seem too ambitious. However, after a few episodes of shaking, he realized the light that would rise behind the aspens was eight hours away. Bob winced, knowing this was not a shiver. Eight hours.
The spaces between the minutes were getting larger; time was moving more slowly. He had been in the snow for over an hour. It felt much longer. He was mad at himself, but couldn’t stay in that emotion—too dangerous. He shared his goal with Kelsey.
“We’ll see those trees, girl. Promise. Both of us, right here. We’ll see ‘em.”
Bob thought about his children. He wasn’t going to make them go to another funeral. As terrible as the situation was, he mustered a tiny slice of confidence, knowing he had not lost consciousness and was not yet entirely frozen. His brain still worked. He placed these thoughts on the positive side of an equation that mostly held seriously negative entries. I’m not dying here, not tonight.
And with that, Bob had set another goal. He was going to see the aspens, and he would see his children again. He knew the night would beat him up. It already had. However, every hour he stayed alive increased his chance of rescue. He had Kelsey, his mind, indignation, and a promise to his kids. That is what he took into the battle as it approached midnight. The thought of his kids sparked a memory of the blizzard weekend with his son, Danny.