Refuge

If I can just make it to that house, is the thought that plays on a continuous loop in my brain. The lights are on and smoke is drifting lazily from the chimney, so I have to believe someone is there who can help me. Every time I think I’m making progress, the house appears to maintain its distance. It’s frustrating, but I have no choice. To stop moving is to stop living.

I remember the snow storms of my youth when it was common to get twelve to eighteen inches dumped on the ground, but this is mind blowing. The storm has been raging for at least a week, with no sign of letting up. There is so much snow that mailboxes, fences, even cars have disappeared from view. Just the house in the distance remains unburied, defiantly ignoring the howling mayhem that surrounds it.

When I started this journey, there was no sign of trouble on the horizon. Just a simple trek from point to point that should only take two to three days. I could have driven it in a few hours, but I wanted to experience the natural beauty of my surroundings first hand. It didn’t take long for nature to show me her ugly side.

The wind started as a gentle, cooling breeze that invigorated rather than discouraged me. Several hours into my hike, dark clouds formed on the horizon and the gentle breeze stiffened into a persistent current of air, slowing my forward progress. Visibility decreased dramatically as gale driven snow granules filled the sky, stinging every exposed piece of skin on my body. I searched for shelter from the melee, but there was none to be found. I trudged on, unable to determine if I was traveling in a straight line or a large circle.

It started in my fingers and toes first, an annoying tingling followed by a total lack of feeling. The numbness moved from my extremities into my hands and feet, then into my arms and legs. It wouldn’t be long before I would succumb to hypothermia and freeze to death. That’s when I saw the house. I didn’t understand why anyone would build a house in the middle of nowhere, nor did I much care. I simply had to reach it. Unfortunately, that goal was unattainable. I collapsed to the ground, hoping the snow would insulate my body from the cold and allow me to survive.

Voices and my body being carefully lowered onto a makeshift litter woke me. The men spoke in what I assumed to be Arabic, a language I don’t understand. Noticing I was awake, one man knelt beside me and asked in English, “How are you feeling?” For the first time since I awoke, I felt excruciating pain throughout most of my body.

I tried to move, but the man said, “Please lay still. You have serious sunburns over much of your body. You are fortunate that the sand storm partially buried you or the sun might have finished you.”

“I don’t understand? I was in the middle of a blizzard and thought I was about to freeze to death. I saw a house with a chimney on a hill. Do you know where it is?”

“I really don’t know of any house like that. The reason we found you was because you had fallen on the trail to the oasis. If you look in that direction, you can just make out a few palm trees on the horizon. The mind plays many tricks when it’s being fried by the sun. I believe your house and the snow storm are hallucinations.”

My rescuers brought me to a hospital where I recovered after several weeks. To this day, I can still see that house when I close my eyes.