Knob Magazine

Do you remember as a child making snowflakes from blue or white construction paper?

Our teacher would show us how to fold and cut the paper, and then as she strung these symmetrical clippings up around the room she would explain that each of these snowflakes, like each real snowflake, and each of us, was unique.

Now when I see snow fall, (especially when it comes slow and heavy on the type of days where you are happy to have a warm couch and a window) I think of a city. All of those flakes are like careless little cars in a traffic jam. They will no doubt reach their destination, and when they do they will sit and thaw. Then freeze. And thaw again. Eventually they will all evaporate.

The headline in his hometown newspaper read “Men Killed in Avalanche Loved Outdoors”. It was a cold Saturday night in late January; the traffic-snow had been falling all weekend long. A long distance phone call prompted me to find that story through the wonders of modern technology…I’ve never even been to Victorville California. When I read the article on a backlit screen, surrounded by advertisements, the words already read like a memory. They brought Mike’s death home.

Avalanches aren’t supposed to happen on treed slopes, and they aren’t supposed to kill people like Mike. He was an EMT, a ski patroller and a life long lover of mountains. Oakley sunglasses once took a photo shoot of him skiing for a magazine ad. Multiple knee surgeries, which had kept him on the couch for so long had finally healed and allowed him to be at the top of his game. He was not a frail man.

When the avalanche hit him, it was powerful enough to knock one of his boots off and carry it so far away from where he was buried that to my knowledge it still hasn’t been located. It knocked him unconscious so that when the rescuers found him his mouth and nose were packed with snow. Technically, he died suffocating on a mouth full of individual little snowflakes.

Snowflakes, as unique as they are, are still just snowflakes. They can’t control where they land. They don’t make avalanches. Like snowflakes, no matter how hard we try we can’t fall up either. And as hard as we may try to not be part of the snow-traffic, we can still be just as deadly… or beautiful.

A few years ago I was bicycling back from breakfast on a Sunday morning in early summer. The girl I then loved rode a few feet in front of me. It was chilly. Her curly light brown hair fell over my green sweater which she wore for the ride home. Without warning (even a turn signal) a shiny-waxed-navy-blue Chrysler turned into a parking lot through the bike lane in front of her. She barely had time to tap her brakes before smacking into the back quarter panel of the car. I was terrified as she hit the pavement, and felt only slightly relieved when she stood up almost immediately. The driver of the Chrysler took her apparent lack of serious injury as a queue to speed off; he didn’t even roll down the window to give her the finger. He yelled something neither of us understood from behind his dark tinted glass.

Every day as she and I and others choose to travel un-encapsulated by plastic and metal, to feel the weather on our faces or hear birds or taste smoky air, we know the risks. We know the rewards too: the heightened awareness of our surroundings. Sometimes little flirtations with death inspire us to live a bit more passionately. I would wager that her raw skin, droplets of blood, and tears were more alive than the unbeautiful fucker who drove the Chrysler would ever hope to be.

In the wilderness there is no time, at least in the numerical sense. You wake when it’s light, sleep when it’s dark, drink when you’re thirsty or can find water. Once removed from the day to day perceptions of time, even just for a few days or hours, you realize how little it matters. Life is not a function of minutes and seconds counting down, (tick tock!) but rather an accumulation of experiences. It is hots and colds, springs and falls, loves and hates, lights and darks. Time is just the border.

I know this: My life has been blessed with a strong body and an adventurous spirit. I can choose my own trails, take my own risks. I can have my own personal measures of progress; even the whiskers washed down the drain in the morning. Growth is everywhere.

As kids in the winter, we would take fallen snowflakes, pack them into balls and throw them, digging forts into the piles left by plows. We would fall on ice and bruise our knees. It was exciting, and when we got too cold and wet we would go inside houses and run our fingers under warm water, watching them turn red and swell in the steam.

I doubt we understood death then, but somehow we knew that we were alive.