Let me tell you about the day that I stopped
praying to a God, and started
praying for a God.
Winter in
Canada is
cold. Everyone knows that. In the dead of winter it gets very cold. -30 degree
Celsius is what the all weather
thermometer on the side of my Grandfather's garage said. Even with the wood stove in the back burning so hot the
hinges glowed red, the
cavernous garage was cold. Frost played on the concrete floor beside the rollup door. Snow falls in all sorts of strange ways. Today it was blowing up from old
drifts, spraying like
sand on the back of my one-piece snowsuit. I was heading out to the
ice-fishing hut that we had hauled out on the thick ice of Wanapitei.
Let me paint you a picture of Wanapitei. A few million years ago, a huge rock fell out of the sky and
drilled a big
divot in the rock of Northern
Ontario. This isn't a little
tourist lake with a
bike path around it. It is visible from
space. Many
kilometers across.
Black water deep. It just freezes over in
January, after months of extreme cold.
A
snowmachine is not a tool. It is a
plaything. Contrary to popular belief, roads remain the primary way of getting around in Canada during the winter. Snowmachines are toys, the
dirt bikes of the
snowbound. A giant series of trails
wreathed my city, groomed and maintained like bike trails. An icy
highway lurked out just outside every door. It
lulls you into a false sense of
security.
It is cool to ignore the cold. It is a uniquely Canadian
affliction. Windchill warnings on the news measure the time it takes
exposed flesh to
freeze, like a demented
UV reading. It is just a
psychological response. Complaining about the cold would make you very
cranky for a good six months. Most Canadians complain about the
heat in the
summer. Even given this attitude, we recognize
dangerous conditions. Minus 30 is a
yellow alert kind of time. If it gets
worse, its time to be careful. I
revved up the snowmachine with
teenage abandon and plunged into the cold.
Vinegar on the
visor of your helmet keeps your breath from
fogging the
glass. Zipping your snow pants over your
boots keeps the ice off the
laces. Gloves with fingers lose
heat faster. Some things you just know in your
blood.
Onto the trails I knew like the lines on my hand.
Snow changes at different
temperatures. You get a
feel for it. That drift is too
deep, that
crust will not hold. Too close to a
tree will drop your
skis. Out into the grip of
winter, a common act of
youth. It was exciting to drive
too fast, turn
too hard, jump the drifts and bumps. Further away from the
works of man, his dirty
salted roads and smoking
chimneys. To nature on a leaping
steel animal, wrapped in a
cocoon of heat,
acrid oil smoke staining your space
fiber suit. Fresh snow, white as a
bleached bone in a desert.
While touring along trails I had seen a
million times before, I got lost.
Extremely lost. The blowing drifts erased my
stitching path across the snow. All the well traveled paths ended and disappeared. I had a
creeping sense of
dread, but it was drowned out by
cocksure teenage bravado. The lake is just over that next
hill, across that next
swamp, along that next
high-tension Hydro line. On and on I went, deeper into the belly of the
winter. Further into the
desert of ice.
The sun shines a hazy
orange red in the evening of cold day. You can
feel the temperature
drop as the light dims. The
omnipresent wind slowed as the
ruby sunset blazed in the
darkening sky. No
chemicals flowed in the
clouds out here. The air burned to
breathe,
pregnant with the tiny
ice crystals I churned up on my last
tether to mankind. The creeping
dread had become abject
fear. I was as lost as a child in a
grocery store. My breathing was rapid and
shallow. I darted and drove recklessly, sinking the machine and yanking it
loose on foot,
exhausting myself. I had no
gauge of were I was. I was starting to get cold. Colder than a
deepfreeze.
I learned that you keep a deepfreeze at -25
degrees so that the ice in the meat stays
stable. Colder causes
freezer burn, as the ice sublimates into a
gas and ruins the frozen
food. I saw
sublimation. The
mist rose like
angels across the
barren fields between the
pines. I was in places untouched by man.
The snowmachine ran out of
gas. I had been running it
wide open across a lake, desperate to try and find a heading. I
cried out in
spiritual pain when it coughed and sputtered. The light, powered only by the spinning
flywheel of the engine, dimmed and faded away. I coasted to a
sickly stop and cried like a
hopeless soul. I knew I was going to
die.
I know why
religions pop up in the desert. Listening to the wind, I saw all my
life pass me by. Not flashes of actions or memories, but
feelings. Love filled me and I cried because I was never going to see
them again. Anger flowed, at myself and the
world, and the
winter and the
cold. The raving laughter of a
fool followed. I laughed at the absurdity of
freezing to death. I pulled my sweat filled
ski mask off and dumped it in the snow beside the
dead machine. Then I sat on the cold padded seat and regarded the fading
path in the snow that lead me to the
final stop. My
cut on curtain of
perfection. No one on
Earth knew were I was. I was where
man was never meant to be. The
tree fell in the forest, and I was there to hear it.
Light faded. The temperature
dropped. You can see 5
kilometers in a straight line before the
curve of the Earth
obscures your view. 30 kilometers around me was
black dark. No lights, no
hope. The sky was clear, a painful blistering
oceanic blue. I was in the
frozen belly of the world. This was
Nature. I found my
true fear while I sat with my back on the freezing
plastic seat I rode.
I am scared of
Nothing.
Oblivion.
Emptiness.
I have never been more
utterly alone. The only flickering chemical reaction in my entire sensory realm was
me and the burning stars billions of leagues away. The pale piteous
moon was
absolute white. It was the back of the eye of
God. No
pupil, no
vision, no acknowledgment of my
yearning soul. It was
Zen, hideous perfect Zen.
Oneness with the entirety of the soulless blank hollowness of the
Universe. I closed my eyes and let my
instincts take over. My
mind was gone.
Hypothermia causes
psychosis, as the
heart slows and deprives the
brain of
oxygen.
Frostbite is the formation of
sharp ice crystals inside the delicate sides of a
cell.
The knife that cuts from inside. My body did things to say
alive. It chewed my
fingers to keep the blood flowing. It made me
dig down and curl up in an icy
burrow out of the wind. It let my eyes
freeze shut, frost lacing the lashes like
rope. It pressed my
dry tongue against the tooth that cracked when it
froze. It gave control back to my
mind after all those months in the hospital, in the
coma. The
animal just wasn't ready to die.
I live now in the
tiny ordered world we have created. I know what else there is. My mind
boggles at trying to describe it, and the fear brings the bile to my
throat. I think back to the
dream, the
black blue stage behind the world, and I squeeze every
sensation I can out of this strange life. The
pinpoint stares from the
lost souls at night almost let me
forget.