Lost

I love being out in the middle of a blizzard, the snow falling and spiraling around me so fast that it obliterates the world and leaves me floating in a cosmic dimension of frosty whiteness – there is no up or down, left or right, in or out – just being there in the midst of it all with the whirling, swooping whiteness stinging my face.

It was during a blizzard that I exited the back door of my dorm, yearning for a personal adventure, walked out into it, crossed the parking lot and road, slogging through the accumulating snow, and headed for the deep ravine dense with evergreens, now white covered, stretching up over the ravine’s edge.

I longed for a moment in the heart of nature and was tempted to descend to the bottom. Then my inner voice cautioned me: ‘You’ll never get back out.’

I paused a moment thinking of how much I wanted that experience, then turned and aimed myself in what I thought was the direction of the dorm.

The dorm wasn’t that far away, but now the snow was high up over my knees and I struggled to move forward. It was exhausting. I stopped a moment to catch my breath and made a slight turn to look back at the ravine, wanting to see the high tree tops rising over its edge. I thought it would give me a sense of how far I had waded through the high unpacked snow.

But I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything except the whiteness swirling around me. I turned back to what I thought was the dorm, figuring I would be able to see the lights from the windows.

Nothing at all. Nothing but whiteness everywhere.

The snow was piling up and getting deeper by the moment and it occurred to me that, as crazy as it may sound, I was totally lost somewhere between the ravine and the dorm. My inner voice was not so gently ordering me: ‘Get back to the dorm!’

I tried not to panic. This little adventure of mine had suddenly turned into an existential challenge. The image of my frozen body being discovered during springtime thaw flashed through my mind.

Every movement forward (I hoped) was arduous. I could feel a slowing down in my thoughts. My fingers and toes were starting to get numb. I tried to call out.

“Help! Help!”

My voice faded in the wind and was muffled by the snow. It was colder than I had thought when I left the building. I was feeling tired and sleepy. I even briefly thought that maybe it was okay to just let sleep overcome me in this great white expanse.

But my body immediately said ‘No.’

“I want to live,” I cried out, and forced myself to move forward until I could see the light over the back door to my left and reoriented myself in the right direction.

Once inside I climbed the stairs to my room, was grateful my roommate was out, changed into my thick wool pants and sweater and crawled under the blanket to defrost myself.

Thinking of the direction I had been moving, I realized I could have missed the building completely and would have ended up on ‘Siberia’, the long wide open area between the dorms and the classroom buildings.

No one knew I had gone out. I didn’t tell anybody. The faculty would have assumed it was just exaggerated adolescent drama. I knew it was best to keep my existential adventure to myself.