Where Winter Devours: Part 2
We knew that winter morphed the mountains into something unbridled and free.
Dear readers,
Today’s story is a continuation of last week’s story. If you haven’t read that yet, go check out: Where Winter Devours: Part 1.
As always, thank you for reading, and please keep letting me know what you think of the newsletter.
Enjoy!
(Shoutout to my friend Annie Mills for lending me this photo!)
My fingers lost feeling as soon as the wind blew. We were only in the parking lot by then, strapping on our snowshoes and zipping up our packs.
This winter day in normally sun-soaked Colorado was abnormal: Clouds shrouded the sun and a sharp wind blew snow off the trembling pines, which floated through the air like dust motes in an empty house. A few minutes after setting out onto that trail, I lost feeling in my feet, too.
I could feel my pulse slow; my heart strained to thump in my chest. These were the signs that the cold was consuming me.
This, of course, wasn’t new. Anytime there was a touch of chill in the air, my toes went numb and I was left with the sensation of walking on nubs, as if my legs ended at my ankles. It happened in my hands, too—all triggered by the most harmless things: the freezer aisle, the air-conditioned library, ice cold drinks from the drive-thru. My whole life, I’d thought it was poor circulation, or what the upstate folks simply called “frostbite.”
Plus, if everyone else on the trail was fine, I should be too. Still, I secretly dreaded the expanse of time ahead. There were no vistas or lakes on this trail, only a thicket of evergreens stretching upwards into a gray sky and a path that seemed endless.
Some of my fingers would thaw as the sun revealed itself, a process marked by a stinging, throbbing pain. Then they’d ice over again when we walked back into shadow. As the cycle of pain and numbness endured for hours, bringing blood back into my hands temporarily to keep the tissue alive, my feet, to me, remained gone.
If something started eating me alive from the bottom up, I wouldn’t feel a thing.
***
The Adirondack Mountains are the crown jewel of Upstate New York. Countless people have been changed by their idyllic American summers: jumping off docks into Lake George, speeding down slides at Enchanted Water Safari, strolling down the sidewalk in a yellow bathing suit indulging in an ice cream.
But summer doesn’t last forever, and most people drive back home when the crimson leaves fall from their branches—a sign that cold is coming. For my family, who was long adapted to the unpredictability of a Northern winter, this sign of frigid weather was just the start of something else.
We knew that winter morphed the mountains into something unbridled and free—and we had it all to ourselves.
The lakes in Old Forge, once with watery depths that could be explored only by boat, became frozen and still. One night we traversed this wide, flat landscape on snowmobiles. In the darkness, the snow looked pale purple and the full moon threw its lavender glow across miles of white. There in the middle of it all, speeding as fast as light itself, my arms were wrapped tight around my dad, whom I trusted with my whole being.
I always wondered how he knew it was okay to cross: Did he ask someone? Was it common knowledge that the lake would be frozen this time of year?
Not knowing for sure gave me a great thrill, and under that was a sharp fear, knowing that at any moment the ice could give way and we’d go careening into the icy deep.
What I loved most about being on the lake that night was the solitude of it: Winter, neglected by the rest of the world, had rendered a passageway between two unknowns: the swirling cosmos above and the black water below.
In that untouched middle place, where the world stretched out big and long with no one else in sight, something inside myself swelled like a cloud. I knew that winter was not only a season that changed the mountains, it was a way of life that changed me, too.
I gave myself up to it, loved it even in its hardness, believing it would always be part of me.
***
Back in the car with the heat on high, I started to thaw.
My toes burned. My feet vibrated with hot pin pricks, like they’d fallen asleep for too long and were now being punished for an extended slumber. Eventually, with time indoors and a steaming bowl of Indian food, the feeling resumed in my feet.
I forgot about the hours I’d spent out there until a week later, when I awoke in the middle of the night with my right big toe on fire. It was sharp and deep, a pain that pulsed straight down to the bone. I thought that maybe I’d broken it snowshoeing, but didn’t realize it because I couldn’t feel my toes.
I hobbled to the kitchen to get an ice pack, since this is what years of track and soccer injuries had taught me. I thought that no matter what it was, any mounting pain and swelling could be alleviated by the cold. The ice only seemed to make it worse. In fact, it was worse than anything I’d ever felt.
I’d spent my whole life in cold winters, and it’d never been painful like this.
What was happening?
(…to be continued)