Cold Winter Daze
Cold Winter Daze
I remembered slipping down the steep embankment; the frost crunching beneath my boots as I scrambled desperately, trying to keep myself from falling into the semi- frozen river below. I remembered, as I hit the thin ice, how it cracked crisply beneath my boots, my knees, my hands. I remembered how my heart pounded as the ice gave way so easily beneath my weight. I remembered falling through, into the water beneath, and how the excruciating cold seemed to slice through me like so many shards of frozen glass.
The next thing I remembered was lying face up, seemingly paralyzed, the snow-covered branches of the trees swaying above me, looking strangely distorted. I couldn't blink. I couldn’t move. I slowly realized that I was frozen beneath the river- encased in ice!
The following days passed by torturously slowly. I didn't know how long I'd been there, but I was sure it had been much longer than the twenty three days I'd counted since regaining consciousness. I'm certain of it because it was late Fall when I fell and the ice was thin, there were still some leaves on the branches, and only enough snow and frost to make the ground crunchy and slippery. When I gained awareness, the ice was thick and solid, the trees were bare of leaves, and heavy with snow.
Some days the snow would fall, blowing across my ice-tomb. Some days piling up on top of me so I could see nothing but white. Days would go by while the snow obscured my vision. Just white through the days, and darkness at night
Then one day I heard a loud rumble. Something heavy was coming toward me on the ice. I could see nothing but white from beneath the snow, but I could feel by the vibrations, that whatever was coming toward me was massive.. and getting closer! I felt my heart pounding. I was terrified. It was right on top of me! Then my white world suddenly turned dark, as the gigantic, vibrating thing moved over me. When it passed, I could see again! The ice was polished smooth, creating a window to the world outside. I heard voices shouting but couldn't make out what they were saying. Maybe I'd been found! I heard a familiar scraping sound... followed by more of the same. Soon I realized that people were skating over me! They were playing hockey right on top of me! The gigantic rumbling monster had been a zamboni, polishing the ice for the hockey players. The ridiculousness of it was almost comical. I might have laughed had the whole ordeal not been so nightmarish. It must have been nearly two months since I’d fallen in! They never play before January!
I tried to call out, but couldn't move my lips. I managed to make a small sound, which I could hear reverberating through the ice, but no one else heard me. Back and forth, they skated right over me, oblivious to my presence. As the time went by, my vision became increasingly obscured and blurry from the skate tracks over my “window”. The agony! I’d been so lonely for so long; so desperate! Now, finally there were people so close! I hoped that someone might have seen me, or heard my muffled cries. I watched through my thoroughly scuffed and clouded ice window as the sky began to darken, and the skaters left me alone again in my ice tomb. My heart sank. Another night passed with merciful sleep; then another long, lonely, agonizing day. People came and went day after day and no one noticed the guy beneath the ice. Though I did learn to look forward to at least being in the proximity of other beings, as agonizingly frustrating as it was to never be seen or heard.
One day, a doe with her young fawn, walking across the ice, paused and sniffed, just inches from my face, curiously studying me. It was the closest thing to company I’d had since the day I regained consciousness. I ached to reach out and touch her. Finally! Another living being was aware of my presence! She stayed for only a minute or so, and then she and her fawn skitted away, slipping and sliding on the ice as they left me alone again. Some part of me, in a moment of delusion, hoped she would go for help. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of the idea. I could feel my sanity slipping away.
Some nights, I dreamed of spring's warmth, with blossoming fruit trees, the sun shining, and the birds singing as I walked over the warm, green earth… but then I would wake to the reality of my frozen Hell. I dreamed of the life I had before: the mundane, the trivial, the small pleasures and freedoms that I had taken for granted for the entirety of my mortal existence- my life, my daily routines, which now seemed an eternity away. The only routine now was to watch skaters skate, the clouds float by, and the sun rise and set. The days became one, becoming illusory to me. Each day lasting an eternity, only to melt together with all the other days, then becoming mere moments as my nightly dreams of spring washed them all away.
Is this what death feels like? Was I dead? I wondered. I’d have hoped that in the afterlife, there would be something better in store for me than this. Besides, whatever this was, it didn't fall into any description I'd ever heard of the afterlife. I didn't recall the "eternity as a popsicle" lesson in Sunday School. Or maybe this was Hell and it actually did freeze over! The idea struck me as funny. If my lungs weren't frozen solid, I might have laughed out loud.
So, eliminating damnation to eternity as a sorbet-everlasting, I'd come up with some possibilities. First, magic. It pained me even to think of it, but I had to admit that there was no way a person could survive for even five minutes in these conditions, let alone for weeks. As ridiculous as that idea was to my rational brain, the second one troubled me even more. What if I was in a coma, and this existence I was perceiving was all in my mind?
Perhaps my body lay in a hospital bed somewhere, hooked up to a ventilator and fed intravenously. I remembered seeing a story on the news, about a woman in a supposedly “vegetative state”. Her husband wanted to let her die, her parents were trying to keep her alive, while the politicians were trying to exploit the families’ grief to serve their own political agenda. What did she spend her days seeing, thinking, feeling? Could she see her family and loved ones; hear their voices? Or was she entombed in ice somewhere, too, watching the days quietly slip by?
When they finally pulled the plug, did the ice melt? Did she feel warmth once again as she slipped into oblivion? Whatever the explanation was for my situation now, one thing was for sure- I was powerless to change it. If I was to get out, it would require the influence of someone or something, and as far as I could tell, no one knew I was down here. If they did, wouldn't they come to get me out?
I wondered, if I were in Hell, would I still have the sleep/wake cycles that I continued to experience? If I were in a coma? I continued to wonder if this was what death was about. If I were rotting in a vacant field, would I continue to be aware until my brain turned to compost? If I were embalmed in a casket, six feet under the earth? The thought was horrifying. I figured that at some point, the ice would melt. If I were dead, would I be aware of my body decomposing after it thawed? The thoughts continued to torture me.
I began to notice over the next few days, that the snow on the branches above me was melting. Slowly but surely. I could hear it as it melted, dripping onto my ice tomb. I could tell that the ice in which I’d been imprisoned was also melting. I could see more clearly every day as, slowly, the ice thinned above me.
Then one morning, after waking from a dream-filled sleep, I slowly became aware of a change in my surroundings. The branches that had hung over me for the duration of my entombment were gone. I then became aware of a sensation of movement, rocking, vertigo. I was disoriented and confused for a moment until I began seeing tree branches, shrubs, shadows passing quickly over me, and I realized that I was moving. The ice had melted enough to send me floating down river, still encased in ice.
At first I wasn’t all that worried, as the water was not flowing too quickly and I still had some tiny shred of hope that once I was thawed, maybe I would be free to resume my former life… I hoped. However, after what I assumed had to have been several miles of floating at an even pace, I realized I was picking up speed. My ice tomb began to undulate with increasing violence as I headed down river.
I imagined crashing into one of the gigantic boulders I could now see jutting out of my river. I imagined myself shattering, along with my ice tomb, against a jagged, granite monolith! I wondered if it would hurt, if I would feel myself break into pieces, if I would retain awareness. I wished I could at least close my eyes.
The turbulence grew stronger and I was tossed around with greater and greater force, now unable to see anything clearly, though briefly aware of blue sky, then, a split second later, dark and frothy water as I flipped from heads to tails like a gigantic coin. I could feel every scrape and impact as my tomb hit the river’s rocky bed or nicked one of the gigantic granite boulders which I increasingly grew to fear.
As the river picked up speed and violence, I realized that I now had something new to fear. What I should have suspected all along... falls.
I’d never been this far down the river and had no idea what lay ahead. I only knew that at some point, it fed into the Atlantic Ocean. If I made it that far, I would have new worries. The current could potentially sweep me up to the arctic ocean, where I might end up frozen indefinitely.
Just then, I was alarmed by a violent impact and sickening cracking sound. My ice-tomb had just slammed into one of those boulders! Some part of me was broken, I just knew it! Was the bottom half of my body now rushing downstream as my upper half lingered here, spinning and meandering in the eddies?
If that was the case, perhaps I didn't want to thaw, as I would certainly suffer an agonizing death! Perhaps my guts would spill out into the river and the fish would nibble away at me. What if I could feel myself being eaten alive? That is, if I was, indeed, alive at all. Of course, being frozen for eternity hardly sounded much better to me.
Finally I and my ice tomb broke loose of the eddies and I continued the journey down the river… and then I saw it… just a quick glimpse of what I was certain was a shoe. I only saw it for a fraction of a second as I was tossed wildly on the rapids, but I was positive, it must be my leg! I was gripped with horror as I imagined what lay ahead of me. I wondered, if my body thawed, would I bleed to death-- that is, again, if I were not already dead? That was not what worried me most. Would I suffer? And if so, for how long? Hours? Days?
It seemed strange that I had felt neither pain nor cold throughout my ordeal. I felt movement, I felt the scrapes, and the impacts, as my ice tomb raced violently down river, but no pain, no cold. I wanted to close my eyes, but it had been months since I had been able to achieve that feat.
Just then, the earth and water dropped from beneath me and I was falling, turning, rolling in the air. One moment I saw the sky, then the waterfall, then the trees and the horizon and then the churning water below. I braced myself for what I imagined would be a violent impact against jagged monoliths which surely awaited beneath the churning white water below.
Suddenly I was underwater. I hadn't felt any impact. At first all I could see was the churning, white water; and then clear, dark water. Then I bobbed to the surface, face down.
The water was calm now. For a long time, I watched the bed of the river below me; the rocks in the dark water, an occasional fish or two, and every once in a while, a near miss with a large boulder which I was certain would tear my face off.
I wished I could be certain whether or not it really had been my leg I’d seen floating by. I only knew that something had broken off, and I was sure that what I’d seen had been a shoe! I suppose staring at the river bed was better than thinking about my leg or legs or perhaps the entire lower half of my body floating down the river. I tried not to think about the process of thawing, perhaps only to have my internal organs gush out of my gaping abdominal cavity.
Fish began taking an interest in me, and all of the potential horrors replayed through my mind. I continued to bob in the water, slowly spinning and bouncing off of rocks or the river bank, flowing downstream to an uncertain fate. Where would I end up? What would happen to me? I tried not to think too much about it. The sun was setting.
Perhaps I will dream again tonight, I thought- and perhaps it will be my last.
I slept fitfully that night. I had strange and terrifying dreams about being broken to bits against the rocks, eaten by fish, rotting on the shore as birds pecked at my eyes and entrails, or maggots feasting on my decomposing corpse. In my dreams, I could feel again. I felt pain as I was dashed against the sharp boulders, pain as the birds pecked at my eyes and entrails, horrible squirming and again pain as the maggots chewed my rotting corpse. Worse still, in my dream, I could smell the putrid stench of my own decomposing flesh. It was a most horrifying night. The worst I’d experienced.
I awoke with a terrible start and found, to my astonishment, that I could once again feel cold- terrible, excruciating cold. My ice tomb had finally melted and I could feel the bitter wind blowing across my body. I was free.
The sky was just beginning to glow in the east, but I could not yet see anything else. I tried to move, but found myself incredibly stiff and achy. I wondered if I would be frozen here, paralyzed while my body was consumed. The horror of my nightmares came flooding into my thoughts. My heart was pounding as I imagined my nightmares coming true. It was then that I realized I was shivering. That had to be a good sign- corpses don’t shiver.
I tried again to move. This time I felt my arm move, just a little, but I’d moved! I tried again and my arm flopped limply across my belly. I was glad at least to be able to move at all after so many months encased in ice. I reasoned that it was to be expected that I would have difficulty moving after such an ordeal. I also reasoned that this whole ordeal defied reason entirely. I also hoped that I’d be able to get up and at least crawl away before something started eating me.
A different kind of chill set in as I recalled that impact, and having seen what looked to be my foot floating by. Reluctantly I tried to move my lower half, hoping it was still there. I felt my left leg move… then my right. Such great relief filled me that I laughed out loud- Well, not loud- quite hoarsely and feebly, but I laughed somewhat audibly.
I then tried rolling over. This was no easy feat. I rocked several times, but was unable to turn over. At this point, I began shivering violently. I’d almost forgotten what cold felt like. It was reassuring to be able to feel anything at all, but now I wondered if, after everything I’d been through, I’d freeze to death in the end.
I was determined to make it. I tested all of my limbs and found that I could, with effort, move each of them. I managed to barely open and close my fists. I was able to flex my legs, though stiffly. Slowly and with difficulty, I bent my right leg out against the sand beneath me. Using my left arm, I made a great effort and finally managed to roll over onto my side, but now my face was pressed into the wet sand and I could still only barely move my arms. After so many months of being frozen and unable to move at all, I’d have thought I’d have more patience now, but I had none. Every moment felt like hours. I slid my left arm up toward my face. I did the same with my right. The process was infuriatingly tedious. I tried to raise myself up, but was completely unable. I was exhausted. I closed my eyes, and was very pleased at the sensation of finally being able to close them.
I awoke again to a cold rush of water washing over my face. I bolted upright and was surprised by the strength I’d gained since my last effort. The sun was up now, and though I was still quite cold, I could feel the warmth of the sun on my back.
A short distance away, rocking back and forth in the delta, was a shoe. My heart dropped. Reluctantly I looked down to determine whether or not it was mine. To my great relief, I appeared to be completely intact. Not only that, but I was still wearing the same boots I had on when I first fell through the ice all those months ago. I’d have saved myself a lot of anxiety if only I’d remembered I’d worn boots, not shoes.
This was the day I had dreamed of for so long, although I hadn't imagined it would be on a beach many miles from where I’d started. I turned and looked at the rising sun, taking in the life-giving, radiant heat.
I hadn't been to the beach in years. Carefully and stiffly, I managed to stand. I took a look around at the vacant, litter-strewn shore, and the tide washing in and out. I took in all the sensations around me, rejoicing to be free at long last.
Greatly relieved to find that my strength had largely returned, I began walking back to civilization, anxious to get home. I found my wallet intact and my credit card inside. I put it to good use and bought myself a bus ticket home.
The bus was smelly, and the people ugly, but I gladly and eagerly endured the three hour bus-ride back to my hometown.
When I finally arrived, I practically sprinted off the bus, grinning like an idiot. I walked with a brisk spring in my step, eager to get back home. It was a roughly fifteen or twenty minute walk from the bus stop before I finally reached my street. I jogged the rest of the way to my own front yard. Standing in front of my house, I was so deliriously overjoyed and relieved to be back, I just stood there laughing. I’m sure if there were any witnesses they’d have thought I’d lost my mind- and maybe I had.
I had been resurrected! This was the warmer day I had dreamed of! I was nearly bursting with relief and anticipation. I jogged to the front door, then, finding the keys in my pocket, where they’d been for the duration of that long Hellish winter, I opened the door.
Joyfully, I breathed in the scent of home.
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