One Baker's Morning Commute

I pick myself up sideways, I think; vertigo’s genius is in deceit. Processing what’s just happened, I find my feet and stand. The wind is violent, thrashing snow about in cyclones, and piercing the small patches of exposed skin on my face that exist between my beard and goggles. A fierce throbbing shoots through my entire left side as I pull myself out of this damned hole, this wind crevasse. I examine the flipped snowmobile below: it lays in a snowy coffin wedged between an ice wall and a cornice formed by last night’s blizzard.

It's just another day's commute from my mountain heaven. I'm a seasoned cabin dweller in my third winter, which also makes me a robust shoveler. So I proceed, unclipping my pack and sliding it off one arm at a time, wincing slightly from just having been pancaked against the embankment. I swing my pack off, skis attached, and pull out my shovel.

My own haziness from the jarring crash is fading. Still, everything is white and wind dictates the world as chaos whirling, like standing smack center in a blender. I continue digging the trench. Snow whips off the top of the wind drift that sent me flying, looking no different from an ocean wave paused and frozen, posing, proud to hold it’s form. I hadn’t seen it at all, not even an outline of it’s 6 six foot stature before it lifted my sled vertical and tossed me aside.

It’s early. The first signs of sun shine low near the ridge line to the East providing a dull but even light. I grip the hood and pull back with my entire body and the sled props upright. “Come on,” I whisper in a yell against the wind, petting the hood, “third pull.” She always starts on the third pull. I’m praying now that she’s still intact so I can get the hell off this pass.

Second pull, oh sweet gal, she fires right up with the harmonious wail of a two-stroke engine. I eye my line over the next wind drift, rev the throttle, and pin it. Punching over the successive drifts, nearly bucking myself off, I make it to the leeward side of the pass. It’s eerily calm now. I fly down the mountain, park my sled at the gate, and run towards the bus stop.

Somehow it is calm and sunny in town. I walk into the bakery an hour late for work, skis on my back and icicles still hanging from my beard. Paul turns, laughing at my wintered state. “Everest is that way, dude," pointing far. "How the hell did you end up here?”

“How did I end up here?” I pause, look down at my ski boots, and back up, “I took the bus.”