tipsy veterinarian grappled with the knob to regain control.
Snow was swirling like white smoke in the porch light and billowing from all directions. The sheer force of it made my eyes water. I had misjudged the storm. This one was the real deal.
My Jeep had burrowed deep into a snowbank. At first I had trouble waking it. The engine grumbled for a while before it turned over.
I turned the wheel and swung around through a windblown drift. I tried the high beams and the low beams and decided there was no appreciable difference between the two. Eventually I found my way back to the road and turned west, headed for Whitney. My hyperbolic estimation of the time it would take to get there—three or four hours—might not be out of line, I decided.
I could understand why my friend Charley Stevens had wanted me to meet Kendrick. If even half his exploits were true, he definitely deserved a profile in the New York Times. And if he knew the wilds as well as I suspected, then he might prove useful to me down the line. Still, something about the self-styled mountain man rubbed me the wrong way: His confidence seemed to border on monomania.
I hadn’t seen much of Charley and his wife, Ora, over the previous months. They’d been forced to leave their beloved cabin in western Maine when a real estate developer bought the land out from under them. Ora had written a lovely note to offer me consolation after Sarah moved to D.C., and she promised to invite me to dinner at their new home, but so far, that hadn’t happened. Every few weeks I’d get a call from Charley, who wanted to chew over some gristle of news, but he often seemed preoccupied by issues he wouldn’t discuss, and I had the good manners not to ask what was troubling him.
I’d never made friends all that easily. After the evening at Doc’s, it was safe to say that dinner parties with veterinarians and dogsledders would not become the basis of a satisfying new social life, either.
* * *
Everyone has heard the old saying that the Eskimos, or Inuit, have umpteen different words for snow. The idea is that they live closer to their environment than we do and thus have not lost the ability to differentiate among the multitudinous forms freezing precipitation can take. Where we see snow, the Inuit see subtleties.
This charming legend, like most charming legends, is false. The Inuit have just about as many words for snow as do English speakers; they just tend to combine their terms in certain ways to add specificity to their meteorological conditions.
I have no doubt, however, that the Inuit recognize the difference a few degrees in temperature can make in shaping a snowflake. Warmer weather means wetter snow. Wet snow is heavy; its weight shatters tree branches. It clings to power lines and brings them crashing down. On the road, it turns to slush and sends tractionless cars skipping into ditches. Wet snow melts quickly in your hair and runs down the back of your neck. It follows you into your house by riding in the treads of your boots and leaves puddles to mark its passage. I know this because, like the Inuit, I live mostly outdoors in the winter.
Because of the low-pressure front pushing down from Canada, the snow that was falling in the road was not wet, but in fact very dry. The wind whipped it around like white sand in a white desert, forming metamorphic dunes and ridges that changed shape while I watched. Dry snow carries its own dangers. It clings to nothing, not even itself, and is so light it can be stirred by the faintest breeze, turning a black night blindingly white. Weightless, it resists plowing and shoveling. It covers your tracks in the woods, making it easier for you to get lost, and because dry snow is the harbinger of subzero temperatures, it makes losing your way a potentially life-threatening mistake.
I’d been on the road for fifteen minutes or so when my cell phone rang in my coat pocket. The number on the display told me that the
Snow was swirling like white smoke in the porch light and billowing from all directions. The sheer force of it made my eyes water. I had misjudged the storm. This one was the real deal.
My Jeep had burrowed deep into a snowbank. At first I had trouble waking it. The engine grumbled for a while before it turned over.
I turned the wheel and swung around through a windblown drift. I tried the high beams and the low beams and decided there was no appreciable difference between the two. Eventually I found my way back to the road and turned west, headed for Whitney. My hyperbolic estimation of the time it would take to get there—three or four hours—might not be out of line, I decided.
I could understand why my friend Charley Stevens had wanted me to meet Kendrick. If even half his exploits were true, he definitely deserved a profile in the New York Times. And if he knew the wilds as well as I suspected, then he might prove useful to me down the line. Still, something about the self-styled mountain man rubbed me the wrong way: His confidence seemed to border on monomania.
I hadn’t seen much of Charley and his wife, Ora, over the previous months. They’d been forced to leave their beloved cabin in western Maine when a real estate developer bought the land out from under them. Ora had written a lovely note to offer me consolation after Sarah moved to D.C., and she promised to invite me to dinner at their new home, but so far, that hadn’t happened. Every few weeks I’d get a call from Charley, who wanted to chew over some gristle of news, but he often seemed preoccupied by issues he wouldn’t discuss, and I had the good manners not to ask what was troubling him.
I’d never made friends all that easily. After the evening at Doc’s, it was safe to say that dinner parties with veterinarians and dogsledders would not become the basis of a satisfying new social life, either.
* * *
Everyone has heard the old saying that the Eskimos, or Inuit, have umpteen different words for snow. The idea is that they live closer to their environment than we do and thus have not lost the ability to differentiate among the multitudinous forms freezing precipitation can take. Where we see snow, the Inuit see subtleties.
This charming legend, like most charming legends, is false. The Inuit have just about as many words for snow as do English speakers; they just tend to combine their terms in certain ways to add specificity to their meteorological conditions.
I have no doubt, however, that the Inuit recognize the difference a few degrees in temperature can make in shaping a snowflake. Warmer weather means wetter snow. Wet snow is heavy; its weight shatters tree branches. It clings to power lines and brings them crashing down. On the road, it turns to slush and sends tractionless cars skipping into ditches. Wet snow melts quickly in your hair and runs down the back of your neck. It follows you into your house by riding in the treads of your boots and leaves puddles to mark its passage. I know this because, like the Inuit, I live mostly outdoors in the winter.
Because of the low-pressure front pushing down from Canada, the snow that was falling in the road was not wet, but in fact very dry. The wind whipped it around like white sand in a white desert, forming metamorphic dunes and ridges that changed shape while I watched. Dry snow carries its own dangers. It clings to nothing, not even itself, and is so light it can be stirred by the faintest breeze, turning a black night blindingly white. Weightless, it resists plowing and shoveling. It covers your tracks in the woods, making it easier for you to get lost, and because dry snow is the harbinger of subzero temperatures, it makes losing your way a potentially life-threatening mistake.
I’d been on the road for fifteen minutes or so when my cell phone rang in my coat pocket. The number on the display told me that the
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