Lost in the Snow

Families can sometimes suffer from too much togetherness. That was the case during our trip to Lake Tahoe over New Year’s.

We woke on the first morning in our favorite lodge to a steely gray sky, the air streaming with snowflakes. I couldn’t wait to step into the downy landscape. But first we stopped for breakfast to feed our boys, 9 and 14. Then we ran into a K-Mart to buy snow pants. We were already back in the car when my husband Dave remembered he wanted to buy board games for later. He and the boys returned to K-Mart while I sat and waited, worrying the beautiful storm would pass before I ever felt a flake on my face.

Crowded in the car cramped with snow gear, we drove slowly through unfamiliar roads searching for a hill where the boys could sled. They bickered in the back seat while Dave and I bickered in the front. Finally we found a quiet spot off a barely plowed road that offered a hill on one side and an empty campground buried under several feet of snow on the other.

My husband agreed to ride saucers with the boys while I clipped on snowshoes and headed toward the campground. I promised to walk ten minutes in and turn around and come right out. “No more than 20 minutes,” I promised as I headed toward snowy solitude. I barely registered Dave’s request for me to stay within sight of the road.

My sons’ screams as they pelted each other with snowballs disappeared behind me, swallowed by cottony air. I felt transported. I’m not much of an athlete: I don’t jog or ski or visit a gym. But I own snowshoes because they allow me to step away from real life a few times a year and escape into the startling silence of a snowscape.

I investigated the campground. Beyond the last campsite lay a large swath of uninterrupted white, a meadow surrounded by a dense grove of sugar pines. Nature’s drama pulled harder than the sense that I had probably passed my time limit. I plunged into the scene, aiming toward a huge sequoia, and reached it breathless and exhilarated.

I soon realized I’d been gone longer than promised. My plan was to cut a shorter path on my return trip, figuring I’d meet my original tracks on the other side of the meadow. My legs were tiring but I wasn’t worried that my original tracks were nowhere to be seen. Surely the road was just ahead. I trudged toward a stump I was certain I had passed on my way in, but as I approached I saw it wasn’t the stump at all, only an unfamiliar bush. I looked around. Nothing was familiar. I thought I saw the road up ahead and pushed toward it, but it was only a dip in the landscape, a mirage that had pulled me farther off course.

I yelled Dave’s name but my voice stopped inches from my face blocked by a wall of falling snow.

The wind howled. The snow blew sideways. I was lost.

How many stories had I read about hikers disappearing in these very same woods? My jeans were soaked to the knee, cold dampness rising up my pant legs. Jeans! Why was I wearing jeans? I knew my husband and sons worried about me now. I imagined their eyes aimed at the point where I had disappeared into the woods and their growing fear as the minutes ticked by. I wanted nothing more than to ease their anxiety, to transport myself next to them in the damp and crowded car that would take us all, red-cheeked and relieved, back to the lodge. But I couldn’t figure out how to do so.

The sky was getting darker. The wide open space around me felt like a prison. My ears pounded. My chest constricted. I couldn’t breathe.

After a few moments of useless tears, I ordered myself to slow my breathing and think. I was the only one who could save me. But to continue searching for the road would no doubt lead me further away from my original route. I looked back toward the now faraway meadow. There was only one way out of this snowy maze: I had to retrace my steps exactly as I had made them. And I better hurry. The falling snow was filling even my most recent tracks and the late afternoon light was fading.

I started walking, slow even steps I hoped would maintain my fragile calm. I headed back into the meadow, its beauty now tinged with menace. My feet felt like lead bricks and my legs burned with the effort of lifting them. I kept my eyes on the ground determined not to allow anything to distract me from finding my way back to my family. I finally re-entered the campground and heard a sound emerge from the snowy air, a car horn. Dave was guiding me back.

My legs were unable to move any faster so I slowly trudged toward the horn as it honked again and again and again. Finally, I plunged over a snow bank onto the road.

Nine-year-old Timmy ran toward me, his blue eyes shining with tears. Christopher, my teenager, yelled from the car: “Mom! Mom! Mom!” Dave looked as if he didn’t know if he should be relieved or angry
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“We thought you were lost!” Christopher yelled as I approached.

I hugged him and Timmy and unclipped the snowshoes. I shoved them into the trunk and gazed for a moment into the forest where the meadow lay somewhere out of sight. I imagined my now-disappearing tracks dotting its perfect surface, the only evidence of a mother’s attempt at escape and her desperate desire to return.

“I was lost,” I said as I eased myself into the front seat. Each face turned toward me with surprise and worry. “But everything’s okay,” I said with a grateful sigh. “I found my way back.”