No Country for a Prius

We leave her before the road ends, before we reach our destination. She’s carried us over the hilly corner of the Carolinas, across the breadth of Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, the square part of Texas, and a hefty chunk of New Mexico only to be left in a pullout because a layer cake of ice and snow separate wheels from the road. We are staying in a cabin about a half mile up a forest service road at the edge of a wilderness area made more remote by time of year and weather. I decided to spend the shortest days of the year in a Rocky Mountain version of a hollow with the laconic but lovable boys that are my husband and his brother. In all probability they could be the only other humans I interact with for a week. We are well provisioned, with ample food, gear for the chill and snow, and enough reading material to become lost in a dense forest of thoughts. We even have a couple of DVDs to watch on the laptop if the electricity holds. We were warned that it tends to go out this time of year.

A creek passes near the back door. Lanky spruce and fir border the cabin and cluster on the hillsides. Darkness comes early but the full moon provides an invitation to head up the powdery slopes. We reach a clearing and take in outlines of peaks and the dark heart of the long river valley stretching out from the nearby headwaters. We reach the end of the road, the one the little Prius couldn’t make it to. We spy a fire through the trees. Winter campers, no cars, must have hiked in or been dropped off. We can’t claim to be the only people in this part of the river valley tonight. Nor can we rest on our worn mantle of being the most hard core. For once we’re sleeping under a roof, taking showers, and indulging in the warmth of a woodstove while in a wilderness. A truck slogs against the snow and slope of the road. Maybe one of the campers. The truck turns around at the top and strains to brake on the slippery down slope. The driver rolls down the window. I’m taking in make, model, and any notably descriptive details. He gives his concern: are we okay? Is that our car down the road? We’re out for a hike, we’re okay thanks, and yes that is our car. The southern license plate doesn’t match our accents, the make and model do. The truck shuffles away. My companions remark on the man’s thoughtfulness. I’m regretting that I couldn’t see the plates on the bearded man’s late 70s Ford pickup because my eyes were fixed on the gun rack. Maybe they’re right, maybe this man drives snowy forest roads with his wolfish dog on winter evenings to make sure everyone and everything’s okay, to offer a hand if needed for the stray wayward traveler. Or maybe he’s ransacking through the Prius, confident that it would take us at least 45 minutes to get back to the car, disappointed that we left a bunch of world music CDs, sneakers, and dress clothes in the trunk. Good thing we didn’t get a fire going in the woodstove or he might have been alerted to the cabin, otherwise not visible from the road. The only cabin in this hamlet that appears to be occupied at the moment.

Snow and moon distort objects and shapes. A fallen basketball hoop looks beastly. Everything has shadows. I try to look out at the beauty of night through the expansive windows without the terror of imagination. Sun, a magical balm, inspires us to explore the lofty prospects above this shady nook. We weave through the aspen grove cognizant of when we are on the trail by the etchings into the aspen bark. Do the naturally occurring hieroglyphics encourage some to add their mark? Diego must have been especially inspired because his name appears with more frequency than a trail marker. We reach a mountaintop with views of peaks in all directions, stitched together in varying combinations of white, brown, and green depending on the ratio of meadow, aspen, and conifer. I could spend every day among the aspen beneath cobalt blue sky, sinking into downy snow. But my body won’t let me. The combination of altitude, sun, and frigid temperatures gnaw at me with a light headache, an unpleasant feeling that intensifies as the afternoon wares on. We make it back to the cabin at dusk and I barely find a seat before my head begins throbbing. I seek out the darkness of the living room, the couch, the warmth of the fire in the stone hearth. The wood paneled doors, candelabras, and stone floor lend a medieval, new agey ambiance. I writhe on the couch, my head taking on new levels of tightness. The impenetrable fortress of a room is hardly soundproof and my formerly quiet companions are lively in their preparations and consumption of a massive feast fit for a day of hard trail breaking in high, snowy hills. They speak of burritos as though one had never before touched their lips. My stomach pounds to a different rhythm than my head. Both were discordant. Is this what happens high on Everest? At what point does the throbbing in the skull, the intense pain behind the eye reach its ebb? What would it feel like to dissolve into nothing? How is it possible that I had flown into Denver and arrogantly climbed a 14,000ft peak the next day without incident but had driven to 9,500 feet, hiked to less than 12,000 and positioned myself as the next tourist to succumb to death by altitude. To die on Everest of altitude sickness is to lose yourself for your ultimate dream. To die in a fire lit room fit for Vincent Price after a day hike is pathetic. My husband checks on me and keeps the fire going but I become paranoid about expiring without notice during their feeding frenzy. Maybe the end isn't imminent but I can’t stop fixating on the idea that people experiencing altitude sickness need to descend to a lower elevation and the reality that my only way down was on foot to the car. Even if they could get the car up here it would take at least a couple hours on icy roads to get to a medical center. At what point does one seek medical treatment? The pain is intense but is it that bad? I decide to surf the waves of nausea, grip the sofa as the vice tightens in my head, and endure the torture of altitude sickness as long as possible. I bark at my companions to stop talking, the slightest sounds reverberating in my head. The flames from the hearth become a vital distraction. Somewhere late in the night, I fall asleep.

After a day spent alone in the cabin I am feverish to return to the hills, regardless of the health consequences. We move slowly, our focus shifts from a point on the map to the grazing of elk, the flutter of turkey’s wings, the plunge of an American Dipper--a nondescript grayish bird of medium build--into a swift, frigid creek in search of aquatic insects. I am especially surprised by the disconcerting snort of a bull whose mahogany hide was camouflaged by a clump of rusty Gambrel oak. Although steam rises off his body because of the temperature differential, I can't help but project anger. He is mad to have been missed when the herd was rustled up off the national forest late last summer. Since then he’s been wandering the hills, scavenging for food, and reduced to trudging up steep slopes in the snow. There are three of us, but I’m the one with the red gaiters that end at my knee. I’m also the smallest. I want to break into a run, but am stopped by the thought that the bull will strike at my bright legs. I carefully walk away, ready to tug at the zipper of the gaiters, to scramble up the nearest tree. We’re upslope of him and he’s not interested in a charge. I keep looking back though, just in case.

We set out in different directions, attempting to cover a radius of possibilities outward from the cabin. Some of these involve passing the car which is good because I need reassurance after thinking about it vandalized or stolen, the criminals laughing tearing up the note written in my husband’s Unabomber script on the dash: this car is not disabled. we are not lost. There were enough of those people lost off the road last winter on the news, no need to provoke a search party. We’d been warned that you couldn’t trust the “clowns” that came up here in winter. Unless you love lung searing air and deeply snowy woods, the other primary motives to explore the side valleys and hills involve breaking into the deserted mountain homes. We emerge from a grove of conifers at the end of a road and are startled by another pickup truck. The two casually dressed men in the cab ask what we’re doing. We say we’re out for a hike. They don’t seem to believe us. They want us to believe that they are going fishing. Ice laps at the edges of the frigid creeks running around here. I find it implausible to think of these men midweek, midday trout fishing. I’m not sure fishing is even allowed here in December. They also note something vague about checking on an uncle’s cabin on a nearby hill. We act like we believe them and let the truck roll away. Leave the Prius alone please. Let them think we drove up here for a day hike. I try not to think of these men staging their game plan midday for a midnight break in.

We fall into a comforting routine of gathering by the woodstove with cocoa after a day wandering and wood chopping. Read for a while, drink more hot beverages and then settle into the interior chamber to watch Dexter grapple with his serial killings while trying to solve the murders of others. By day my mind alights in Rocky Mountain highs, by night I stifle the growing palette of scenarios detailing our demise. Each involves the sketchy characters we encountered, a fullish moon, and the axes, chainsaw, and icy waters just outside the door. The faint, staticey connection on the radio warns of a big storm. We decide to leave a day early to beat the storm and head into the Prius Country that is Santa Fe. We hike near town, cross country ski through aspen, track elk across a snow dusted mesa, and wander through cheery downtown streets on Christmas Eve brightened by farolitos and luminarias, the songs of carolers, and copious cider and cocoa. By Christmas morning we are on the road again, Chicago bound.