Page 49 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

A Deceptive Climate - Chapter 11
Our footprints in the snow.
Having to have the truck worked on delayed us considerably and threw us into darkness getting home. Then driving after dark lengthened our driving time so we were well into the cold before we arrived at our cabin.
Lon let me out on the road after a three-and- a-half-hour ride in the cold truck. I still had to walk half a mile to the cabin and my feet were already like ice.
I loved the summer climate in New Mexico - cool and pleasant, high and dry - but the winter climate was proving to be deceptive. In the daytime, the sun shone, no wind blew, and it was comfortable outside without a coat. Only the cold feet underneath the snow testified to the fact that the temperature never rose above freezing in the warmest part of the day.
It was too dark to find the path we’d beaten down in the morning, so I floundered through the knee-deep snow which, at this elevation of 7500 feet and on slightly uphill
ground, left me panting before I’d gone ten yards.
Van came running down the hill when he saw the lights of the truck and took my parcels which allowed me to climb unencumbered. If I stopped to get my breath, my feet ached unbearably with the cold. I tried to stand on the blankets, but the cold seeped right through. The situation was rapidly becoming quite desperate, what with being unable to breathe and also unable to stop long enough to recover my breath.
I fell several times and got right up, but finally I fell once more in the snow and didn’t rise. I was beginning to feel warm all over and I thought that snow was the softest warmest material I’d every felt. I snuggled down into this downy nest to rest.
Van immediately tossed all the packages aside and ran to help me up. I fought him like a tiger because I thought he was mean to drag me from my cozy sanctuary. I pleaded with him to let me rest where it was warm, but he overrode my resistance and half carried, half dragged me to the cabin. With his added burden, he soon became winded and stood me up on the running board of my car when we came to it (still standing in the road near the cabin), while he tried to revive. When Mother opened the door for us, she was aghast at the terrible sound of our difficult and painful breathing.
As the heat of the room hit me, my body became suffused with pain, but it was