We hurtled across the tundra in the dark. The old train chugged,
rattled, occasionally whined. As the sun came up around 10 a.m., the
world faded from black to cobalt to white and every shade between. All
was snow; it was just a matter of how much, where, what shape. Black
spruce trees draped in white rose up from the ground like crystals of
hoarfrost.
“If you walked in that direction,” I heard my father say, “you would
die.” I could not see in what direction he was pointing, but it didn’t
matter. He was right. In temperatures that hovered around zero, it would
take several days to hike to the nearest town.
No comments:
Post a Comment