Welcome To The Bullpen
To the Man in the Woods
By Ronald Anick
He looked out the window of his cabin nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The land was covered with a layer of snow so deep that he was sure it was over his head still in many places. Yet, this was already the end of March, and summer seemed so far away. It didn’t matter. Here in this structure he’d built last fall he was safe and warm.
The sky, an unbroken slate of gray, seemed to blend with the snow in a dark line that marked the horizon, surrounded on either side by towering pines and the occasional maple, or perhaps an oak. One of the oaks, not far from the cabin, still held the remains of its summer leaves, although now they were brown and shriveled, and would no doubt crumble at the slightest wind. But the man knew there would be no wind at this end of the valley. He was clever in the ways of the wild, and had chosen his home wisely. The wind and storms, normally out of the west, were stopped by the impenetrable wall of pines that surrounded his cabin on all but one side -- the side facing the river now frozen with at least two feet of ice. The man knew from experience the river would not completely open until mid-May, but he was not worried. He needed no supplies, and his Hawken (a .50 caliber) supplied all the meat he needed.
Behind the cabin, perhaps not more than three or four dozen yards, the land took a sudden sweep upward forming the base of a mountain range that extended farther than could be guessed. An inhospitable land of bitter cold and blowing winds, much of which was still unexplored by the ever increasing waves of adventurous young men from the East, of which he was one.
But the man now could not see the mountains, nor the pines, for the only window faced the frozen river, and a horizon that now, the man could see, was becoming hazy. It was starting to snow. The man smiled--perhaps for the first time in days--at the thought of another storm coming through. He knew survival was not a thing to be taken lightly, especially in this cold wilderness, but this was the--what?--tenth, twelfth storm to come through just in the last two months? Hadn’t he seen the worst the mountain could throw at him and survived? Yes, and he would survive this one, too. He was not worried. He turned away from the window to throw another log into the fireplace, packed his pipe, and watched the hungry flames grow tall in the hearth.
It was now a day later, and the man was once more peering out the window. The storm had finally hit full force late last night and now the snow was falling in giant plumes of swirling white. The occasional gust of wind would whip it back and forth, forcing it into every possible crevice of the lodge. The man had gone out earlier to gather more wood for the fireplace and found that it had snowed already six inches, and the temperature, he guessed, was now below zero. His exhaled breath had formed clouds of condensed vapor as he’d gathered another arm-load of wood. He’d looked up at the sky for some sign of the storm letting up, but there had been none.
Still, he was not worried. He had calculated that his supply of wood was good for another two days, maybe three if it didn’t get any colder. And his supply of meat would last twice that long. Behind him, the fire burned in defiance of the cold. He watched the flames for a while, then mindlessly busied himself with the seemingly endless little tasks that occupy the wilderness dweller. Outside, the wind continued to blow.
It was now another day later, and the man was peering out the window with a serious look on his face. It had continued to snow, and now the wind was howling with such force the trees no longer offered protection, and the cabin groaned and strained at the pressure exerted upon it, and the window rattled in its frame. The man guessed it had snowed another foot and a half since the day before, but it was difficult to tell for the shifting wind was causing it to drift.
He had guessed his wood supply would last another two days, but he had not figured the temperature would drop so low. He figured it to be 25 below zero, and the wind would surely make it seem even colder. An un-mittened hand in this weather would surely go numb in under a minute, perhaps half that.
Now the fire was roaring in the hearth like a veritable inferno, yet he could still feel the cold. He could not afford to let the fire die. The cost of doing so was his life, and he was not willing to part with it quite yet. His wood supply, pathetically low, was now piled in the corner. Luckily, he’d had enough sense to bring it all in last night, for the next morning he’d found the snow had drifted up against the door and he’d had to labor for over an hour to get it open.
And now, looking out the window once more, he wondered when the storm was going to pass. It was snowing even harder now, for he could no longer see the oak with the dead leaves; blotted out by a swirling wall of pure white. He still had plenty of food, but what good was food to a frozen corpse? If the storm didn’t end in the next twelve hours he . . . well, he didn’t want to think about that now. He set about fixing-up a meal to take his mind off the snow and the cold.
The next day found the man hunkered in front of the fireplace. He’d thrown the last chunk of wood on the fire less than thirty minutes before, yet already the fire was starting to die down. He stared at the flames without really seeing them; his mind as blank as his stare. The wood was gone. There was no more. It was funny, he’d thought earlier, how he was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness, and he had no wood for his fire. Or rather, he couldn’t get to it. The door and even the window were piled high with snow, packed hard by the wind. Try as he might, he couldn’t open the door, and to break to window was to invite certain death. He was trapped, and he had no wood. And the fire continued to die. Already he could feel the cold wrapping itself around him, icy fingers crawling across his flesh, slowly taking hold of him.
He thought he’d outsmarted the mountains, but she’d had an ace up her sleeve, and he was going to lose. He saw that now, and he shuddered at the thought of what he now knew was going to be his end. Incredibly he was already starting to shiver. He couldn’t guess as to the temperature, and if he had known that it was now 60 degrees below zero, it wouldn’t have done any good.
The cold seemed to press in from all around now, and he awoke from his daze. He didn’t want to freeze to death in this white hell. He wanted to live. He wanted to feel the sun on his skin. He wanted to take his canoe down the river when the ice finally left. He wanted to go back to the East and brag about how he’d challenged the mountains, and won. He began to pray.
And it was, as he was finishing his prayer, he felt the first small tremor in the pine-board floor. He put his hand to the floor and could feel . . . something. The tremors were increasing and now the whole cabin was shuddering and he became aware of a far-off sound like that of thunder. His eyes widened, for it seemed to be getting closer, and he realized what it was. And he saw clearly now that what he thought was an ingenious place to build a cabin was the worst he could have chosen. At the base of the mountain, as he was now, the snow had piled up on the cliffs high above. And because of the surrounding trees he simply had not noticed as it piled up higher and higher through the long winter months.
The cabin was literally shaking now as the roaring, grinding sound drew closer and the man realized the weight of the snow had become too much for the mountain to hold, and now it was taking the shortest path into the valley, and he was right in the middle of it. He saw now that he was not going to die, for he was already dead. He had died the moment he decided to build in this cursed valley. All the past months he had lived by the confidence in his cleverness, which now proved to be stupidity of ignorance.
He lowered his head and sobbed only once before the deafening roar exploded through the wall in front of him, casting the hissing remains of the fire aside as it wrenched the cabin from its footings and carried it to destruction at the bottom of the valley. As the echoes died away, all that remained was a twisted jumble of snow and splintered logs. The fire was now completely out, but the man would never know.
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