The blizzard started on Wednesday morning. It was that rather common,
truly western combination of a heavy snowstorm with a blinding northern
gale--such as piles the snow in hills and mountains and makes walking
next to impossible.
I cannot exactly say that I viewed it with unmingled joy. There were
special reasons for that. It was the second week in January; when I had
left “home” the Sunday before, I had been feeling rather bad; so my wife
would worry a good deal, especially if I did not come at all. I knew
there was such a thing as its becoming quite impossible to make
the drive. I had been lost in a blizzard once or twice before in
my lifetime. And yet, so long as there was the least chance that
horse-power and human will-power combined might pull me through at all,
I was determined to make or anyway to try it.
At noon I heard the first dismal warning. For some reason or other I
had to go down into the basement of the school. The janitor, a highly
efficient but exceedingly bad-humoured cockney, who was dissatisfied
with all things Canadian because “in the old country we do things
differently”--whose sharp tongue was feared by many, and who once
remarked to a lady teacher in the most casual way, “If you was a lidy,
I’d wipe my boots on you!”--this selfsame janitor, standing by the
furnace, turned slowly around, showed his pale and hollow-eyed face,
and smiled a withering and commiserating smile. “Ye won’t go north this
week,” he remarked--not without sympathy, for somehow he had taken
a liking to me, which even prompted him off and on to favor me with
caustic expressions of what he thought of the school board and the
leading citizens of the town. I, of course, never encouraged him in his
communicativeness which seemed to be just what he would expect, and no
rebuff ever goaded him into the slightest show of resentment. “We’ll
see,” I said briefly “Well, Sir,” he repeated apodeictically, “ye
won’t.” I smiled and went out.
But in my classroom I looked from the window across the street. Not even
in broad daylight could you see the opposite houses or trees. And I knew
that, once a storm like that sets in, it is apt to continue for days at
a stretch. It was one of those orgies in which Titan Wind indulges
ever so often on our western prairies. I certainly needed something to
encourage me, and so, before leaving the building, I went upstairs to
the third story and looked through a window which faced north. But,
though I was now above the drifting layer, I could not see very far
here either; the snowflakes were small and like little round granules,
hitting the panes of the windows with little sounds of “ping-ping”;
and they came, driven by a relentless gale, in such numbers that they
blotted out whatever was more than two or three hundred yards away.
The inhabitant of the middle latitudes of this continent has no data to
picture to himself what a snowstorm in the north may be. To him snow is
something benign that comes soft-footedly over night, and on the most
silent wings like an owl, something that suggests the sleep of Nature
rather than its battles. The further south you go, the more, of course,
snow loses of its aggressive character.
At the dinner table in the hotel I heard a few more disheartening words.
But after four I defiantly got my tarpaulin out and carried it to the
stable. If I had to run the risk of getting lost, at least I was going
to prepare for it. I had once stayed out, snow-bound, for a day and a
half, nearly without food and altogether without shelter; and I was not
going to get thus caught again. I also carefully overhauled my cutter.
Not a bolt but I tested it with a wrench; and before the stores were
closed, I bought myself enough canned goods to feed me for a week should
through any untoward accident the need arise. I always carried a little
alcohol stove, and with my tarpaulin I could convert my cutter within
three minutes into a windproof tent. Cramped quarters, to be sure, but
better than being given over to the wind at thirty below!
More than any remark on the part of friends or acquaintances one fact
depressed me when I went home. There was not a team in town which had
come in from the country. The streets were deserted: the stores were
empty. The north wind and the snow had the town to themselves.
On Thursday the weather was unchanged. On the way to the school I had to
scale a snowdrift thrown up to a height of nearly six feet, and, though
it was beginning to harden, from its own weight and the pressure of the
wind, I still broke in at every step and found the task tiring in the
extreme. I did my work, of course, as if nothing oppressed me, but in my
heart I was beginning to face the possibility that, even if I tried,
I might fail to reach my goal. The day passed by. At noon the
school-children, the teachers, and a few people hurrying to the
post-office for their mail lent a fleeting appearance of life to the
streets. It nearly cheered me; but soon after four the whole town again
took on that deserted look which reminded me of an abandoned mining
camp. The lights in the store windows had something artificial
about them, as if they were merely painted on the canvas-wings of a
stage-setting. Not a team came in all day.
On Friday morning the same. Burroughs would have said that the weather
had gone into a rut. Still the wind whistled and howled through the
bleak, dark, hollow dawn; the snow kept coming down and piling up, as
if it could not be any otherwise. And as if to give notice of its
intentions, the drift had completely closed up my front door. I fought
my way to the school and thought things over. My wife and I had agreed,
if ever the weather should be so bad that there was danger in going at
night, I was to wait till Saturday morning and go by daylight. Neither
one of us ever mentioned the possibility of giving the attempt up
altogether. My wife probably understood that I would not bind myself by
any such promise. Now even on this Friday I should have liked to go by
night, if for no other reason, than for the experience’s sake; but I
reflected that I might get lost and not reach home at all. The horses
knew the road--so long as there was any road; but there was none now.
I felt it would not be fair to wife and child. So, reluctantly and with
much hesitation, but definitely at last, I made up my mind that I was
going to wait till morning. My cutter was ready--I had seen to that on
Wednesday. As soon as the storm had set in, I had instinctively started
to work in order to frustrate its designs.
At noon I met in front of the post-office a charming lady who with her
husband and a young Anglican curate constituted about the only circle of
real friends I had in town. “Why!” I exclaimed, “what takes you out into
this storm, Mrs. ----?” “The desire,” she gasped against the wind and
yet in her inimitable way, as if she were asking a favour, “to have
you come to our house for tea, my friend. You surely are not going this
week?” “I am going to go to-morrow morning at seven,” I said. “But I
shall be delighted to have tea with you and Mr. ----.” I read her at
a glance. She knew that in not going out at night I should suffer--she
wished to help me over the evening, so I should not feel too much
thwarted, too helpless, and too lonesome. She smiled. “You really want
to go? But I must not keep you. At six, if you please.” And we went our
ways without a salute, for none was possible at this gale-swept corner.
After four o’clock I took word to the stable to have my horses fed and
harnessed by seven in the morning. The hostler had a tale to tell. “You
going out north?” he enquired although he knew perfectly well I was. “Of
course,” I replied. “Well,” he went on, “a man came in from ten miles
out; he was half dead; come, look at his horses! He says, in places the
snow is over the telephone posts.” “I’ll try it anyway,” I said. “Just
have the team ready I know what I can ask my horses to do. If it cannot
be done, I shall turn back, that is all.”
When I stepped outside again, the wind seemed bent upon shaking the
strongest faith. I went home to my house across the bridge and dressed.
As soon as I was ready, I allowed myself to be swept past stable, past
hotel and post-office till I reached the side street which led to the
house where I was to be the guest.
How sheltered, homelike and protected everything looked inside. The
hostess, as usual, was radiantly amiable. The host settled back after
supper to talk old country. The Channel Islands, the French Coast,
Kent and London--those were from common knowledge our most frequently
recurring topics. Both host and hostess, that was easy to see, were bent
upon beguiling the hours of their rather dark-humored guest. But the
howling gale outside was stronger than their good intentions. It was not
very long before the conversation got around--reverted, so it seemed--to
stories of storms, of being lost, of nearly freezing. The boys were
sitting with wide and eager eyes, afraid they might be sent to bed
before the feast of yarns was over. I told one or two of my most
thrilling escapes, the host contributed a few more, and even the hostess
had had an experience, driving on top of a railroad track for several
miles, I believe, with a train, snowbound, behind her. I leaned over.
“Mrs. ----,” I said, “do not try to dissuade me. I am sorry to say it,
but it is useless. I am bound to go.” “Well,” she said, “I wish you
would not.” “Thanks,” I replied and looked at my watch. It was two
o’clock. “There is only one thing wrong with coming to have tea in this
home,” I continued and smiled; “it is so hard to say good-bye.”
I carefully lighted my lantern and got into my wraps. The wind was
howling dismally outside. For a moment we stood in the hall, shaking
hands and paying the usual compliments; then one of the boys opened the
door for me; and in stepping out I had one of the greatest surprises.
Not far from the western edge of the world there stood the setting
half-moon in a cloudless sky; myriads of stars were dusted over the
vast, dark blue expanse, twinkling and blazing at their liveliest. And
though the wind still whistled and shrieked and rattled, no snow came
down, and not much seemed to drift. I pointed to the sky, smiled, nodded
and closed the door. As far as the drifting of the snow went, I was
mistaken, as I found out when I turned to the north, into the less
sheltered street, past the post-office, hotel and stable. In front of
a store I stopped to read a thermometer which I had found halfways
reliable the year before. It read minus thirty-two degrees...
It was still dark, of course, when I left the house on Saturday morning
to be on my way. Also, it was cold, bitterly cold, but there was very
little wind. In crossing the bridge which was swept nearly clean of snow
I noticed a small, but somehow ominous-looking drift at the southern
end. It had such a disturbed, lashed-up appearance. The snow was
still loose, yet packed just hard enough to have a certain degree of
toughness. You could no longer swing your foot through it: had you run
into it at any great speed, you would have fallen; but as yet it was
not hard enough to carry you. I knew that kind of a drift; it is
treacherous. On a later drive one just like it, only built on a vastly
larger scale, was to lead to the first of a series of little accidents
which finally shattered my nerve. That was the only time that my
temerity failed me. I shall tell you about that drive later on.
At the stable I went about my preparations in a leisurely way. I knew
that a supreme test was ahead of myself and the horses, and I meant to
have daylight for tackling it. Once more I went over the most important
bolts; once more I felt and pulled at every strap in the harness. I had
a Clark footwarmer and made sure that it functioned properly I pulled
the flaps of my military fur cap down over neck, ears and cheeks. I
tucked a pillow under the sweater over my chest and made sure that my
leggings clasped my furlined moccasins well. Then, to prevent my coat
from opening even under the stress of motion, just before I got into the
cutter, I tied a rope around my waist.
The hostler brought the horses into the shed. They pawed the floor and
snorted with impatience. While I rolled my robes about my legs and drew
the canvas curtain over the front part of the box, I weighed Dan with my
eyes. I had no fear for Peter, but Dan would have to show to-day that he
deserved the way I had fed and nursed him. Like a chain, the strength
of which is measured by the strength of its weakest link, my team was
measured by Dan’s pulling power and endurance. But he looked good to me
as he danced across the pole and threw his head, biting back at Peter
who was teasing him.
The hostler was morose and in a biting mood. Every motion of his seemed
to say, “What is the use of all this? No teamster would go out on a
long drive in this weather, till the snow has settled down; and here a
schoolmaster wants to try it.”
At last he pushed the slide doors aside, and we swung out. I held the
horses tight and drove them into that little drift at the bridge to slow
them down right from the start.
The dawn was white, but with a strictly localised angry glow where the
sun was still hidden below the horizon. In a very few minutes he would
be up, and I counted on making that first mile just before he appeared.
This mile is a wide, well levelled road, but ever so often, at intervals
of maybe fifty to sixty yards, steep and long promontories of snow had
been flung across--some of them five to six feet high. They started at
the edge of the field to the left where a rank growth of shrubby weeds
gave shelter for the snow to pile in. Their base, alongside the fence,
was broad, and they tapered across the road, with a perfectly flat top,
and with concave sides of a most delicate, smooth, and finished looking
curve, till at last they ran out into a sharp point, mostly beyond the
road on the field to the right.
The wind plays strange pranks with snow; snow is the most plastic medium
it has to mould into images and symbols of its moods. Here one of these
promontories would slope down, and the very next one would slope upward
as it advanced across the open space. In every case there had been
two walls, as it were, of furious blow, and between the two a lane of
comparative calm, caused by the shelter of a clump of brush or weeds, in
which the snow had taken refuge from the wind’s rough and savage play.
Between these capes of snow there was an occasional bare patch of
clean swept ground. Altogether there was an impression of barren, wild,
bitter-cold windiness about the aspect that did not fail to awe my mind;
it looked inhospitable, merciless, and cruelly playful.
As yet the horses seemed to take only delight in dashing through the
drifts, so that the powdery crystals flew aloft and dusted me all over.
I peered across the field to the left, and a curious sight struck me.
There was apparently no steady wind at all, but here and there, and
every now and then a little whirl of snow would rise and fall again.
Every one of them looked for all the world like a rabbit reconnoitring
in deep grass. It jumps up on its hindlegs, while running, peers out,
and settles down again. It was as if the snow meant to have a look
at me, the interloper at such an early morning hour. The snow was so
utterly dry that it obeyed the lightest breath; and whatever there was
of motion in the air, could not amount to more than a cat’s-paw’s sudden
reach.
At the exact moment when the snow where it stood up highest became
suffused with a rose-red tint from the rising sun, I arrived at the turn
to the correction line. Had I been a novice at the work I was engaged
in, the sight that met my eye might well have daunted me. Such drifts
as I saw here should be broken by drivers who have short hauls to make
before the long distance traveller attempts them. From the fence on the
north side of the road a smoothly curved expanse covered the whole of
the road allowance and gently sloped down into the field at my left. Its
north edge stood like a cliff, the exact height of the fence, four feet
I should say. In the centre it rose to probably six feet and then fell
very gradually, whaleback fashion, to the south. Not one of the fence
posts to the left was visible. The slow emergence of the tops of these
fence posts became during the following week, when I drove out here
daily, a measure for me of the settling down of the drift. I believe I
can say from my observations that if no new snow falls or drifts in,
and if no very considerable evaporation takes place, a newly piled
snowdrift, undisturbed except by wind-pressure, will finally settle down
to about from one third to one half of its original height, according
to the pressure of the wind that was behind the snow when it first was
thrown down. After it has, in this contracting process, reached two
thirds of its first height, it can usually be relied upon to carry horse
and man.
The surface of this drift, which covered a ditch besides the grade and
its grassy flanks, showed that curious appearance that we also find in
the glaciated surfaces of granite rock and which, in them, geologists
call exfoliation. In the case of rock it is the consequence of extreme
changes in temperature. The surface sheet in expanding under sudden heat
detaches itself in large, leaflike layers. In front of my wife’s cottage
up north there lay an exfoliated rock in which I watched the process for
a number of years. In snow, of course, the origin of this appearance
is entirely different; snow is laid down in layers by the waves in the
wind. “Adfoliation” would be a more nearly correct appellation of the
process. But from the analogy of the appearance I shall retain the more
common word and call it exfoliation. Layers upon layers of paperlike
sheets are superimposed upon each other, their edges often “cropping
out” on sloping surfaces; and since these edges, according to the
curvatures of the surfaces, run in wavy lines, the total aspect is very
often that of “moire” silk.
I knew the road as well as I had ever known a road. In summer there was
a grassy expanse some thirty feet wide to the north; then followed the
grade, flanked to the south by a ditch; and the tangle of weeds and
small brush beyond reached right up to the other fence. I had to stay
on or rather above the grade; so I stood up and selected the exact spot
where to tackle it. Later, I knew, this drift would be harmless enough;
there was sufficient local traffic here to establish a well-packed
trail. At present, however, it still seemed a formidable task for a team
that was to pull me over thirty-three miles more. Besides it was a first
test for my horses; I did not know yet how they would behave in snow.
But we went at it. For a moment things happened too fast for me to watch
details. The horses plunged wildly and reared on their hind feet in
a panic, straining against each other, pulling apart, going down
underneath the pole, trying to turn and retrace their steps. And
meanwhile the cutter went sharply up at first, as if on the crest of a
wave, then toppled over into a hole made by Dan, and altogether behaved
like a boat tossed on a stormy sea. Then order returned into the chaos.
I had the lines short, wrapped double and treble around my wrists;
my feet stood braced in the corner of the box, knees touching the
dashboard; my robes slipped down. I spoke to the horses in a soft,
quiet, purring voice; and at last I pulled in. Peter hated to stand.
I held him. Then I looked back. This first wild plunge had taken us a
matter of two hundred yards into the drift. Peter pulled and champed at
the bit; the horses were sinking nearly out of sight. But I knew that
many and many a time in the future I should have to go through just this
and that from the beginning I must train the horses to tackle it right.
So, in spite of my aching wrists I kept them standing till I thought
that they were fully breathed. Then I relaxed my pull the slightest bit
and clicked my tongue. “Good,” I thought, “they are pulling together!”
And I managed to hold them in line. They reared and plunged again like
drowning things in their last agony, but they no longer clashed against
nor pulled away from each other. I measured the distance with my eye.
Another two hundred yards or thereabout, and I pulled them in again.
Thus we stopped altogether four times. The horses were steaming when we
got through this drift which was exactly half a mile long; my cutter was
packed level full with slabs and clods of snow; and I was pretty well
exhausted myself.
“If there is very much of this,” I thought for the moment, “I may not be
able to make it.” But then I knew that a north-south road will drift in
badly only under exceptional circumstances. It is the east-west grades
that are most apt to give trouble. Not that I minded my part of it, but
I did not mean to kill my horses. I had sized them up in their behaviour
towards snow. Peter, as I had expected, was excitable. It was hard to
recognize in him just now, as he walked quietly along, the uproar of
playing muscle and rearing limbs that he had been when we first struck
the snow. That was well and good for a short, supreme effort; but not
even for Peter would it do in the long, endless drifts which I had to
expect. Dan was quieter, but he did not have Peter’s staying power, in
fact, he was not really a horse for the road. Strange, in spite of his
usual keenness on the level road, he seemed to show more snow sense in
the drift. This was to be amply confirmed in the future. Whenever an
accident happened, it was Peter’s fault. As you will see if you read on,
Dan once lay quiet when Peter stood right on top of him.
On this road north I found the same “promontories” that had been such
a feature of the first one, flung across from the northwest to the
southeast. Since the clumps of shrubs to the left were larger here, and
more numerous, too, the drifts occasionally also were larger and higher;
but not one of them was such that the horses could not clear it with one
or two leaps. The sun was climbing, the air was winter-clear and still.
None of the farms which I passed showed the slightest sign of life.
I had wrapped up again and sat in comparative comfort and at ease,
enjoying the clear sparkle and glitter of the virgin snow. It was not
till considerably later that the real significance of the landscape
dawned upon my consciousness. Still there was even now in my thoughts a
speculative undertone. Subconsciously I wondered what might be ahead of
me.
We made Bell’s corner in good time. The mile to the west proved easy.
There were drifts, it is true, and the going was heavy, but at no place
did the snow for any length of time reach higher than the horses’ hocks.
We turned to the north again, and here, for a while, the road was very
good indeed; the underbrush to the left, on those expanses of wild
land, had fettered, as it were, the feet of the wind. The snow was held
everywhere, and very little of it had drifted. Only one spot I remember
where a clump of Russian willow close to the trail had offered shelter
enough to allow the wind to fill in the narrow road-gap to a depth of
maybe eight or nine feet; but here it was easy to go around to the west.
Without any further incident we reached the point where the useless,
supernumerary fence post had caught my eye on my first trip out. I had
made nearly eight miles now.
But right here I was to get my first inkling of sights that might
shatter my nerve. You may remember that a grove of tall poplars ran to
the east, skirted along its southern edge by a road and a long line of
telephone posts. Now here, in this shelter of the poplars, the snow from
the more or less level and unsheltered spaces to the northwest had piled
in indeed. It sloped up to the east; and never shall I forget what I
beheld.
The first of the posts stood a foot in snow; at the second one the drift
reached six or seven feet up; the next one looked only half as long
as the first one, and you might have imagined, standing as it did on a
sloping hillside, that it had intentionally been made so much shorter
than the others; but at the bottom of the visible part the wind, in
sweeping around the pole, had scooped out a funnel-shaped crater which
seemed to open into the very earth like a sinkhole. The next pole stood
like a giant buried up to his chest and looked singularly helpless and
footbound; and the last one I saw showed just its crossbar with three
glassy, green insulators above the mountain of snow. The whole surface
of this gigantic drift showed again that “exfoliated” appearance which I
have described. Strange to say, this very exfoliation gave it
something of a quite peculiarly desolate aspect. It looked so harsh, so
millennial-old, so antediluvian and pre-adamic! I still remember with
particular distinctness the slight dizziness that overcame me, the
sinking feeling in my heart, the awe, and the foreboding that I had
challenged a force in Nature which might defy all tireless effort and
the most fearless heart.
So the hostler had not been fibbing after all!
But not for a moment did I think of turning back. I am fatalistic in
temperament. What is to be, is to be, that is not my outlook. If at last
we should get bound up in a drift, well and good, I should then see what
the next move would have to be. While the wind blows, snow drifts; while
my horses could walk and I was not disabled, my road led north, not
south. Like the snow I obeyed the laws of my nature. So far the road was
good, and we swung along.
Somewhere around here a field presented a curious view Its crop had not
been harvested; it still stood in stooks. But from my side I saw nothing
of the sheaves--it seemed to be flax, for here and there a flag of loose
heads showed at the top. The snow had been blown up from all directions,
so it looked, by the counter-currents that set up in the lee of every
obstacle. These mounds presented one and all the appearance of cones
or pyramids of butter patted into shape by upward strokes made with a
spoon. There were the sharp ridges, irregular and erratic, and there
were the hollows running up their flanks--exactly as such a cone of
butter will show them. And the whole field was dotted with them, as if
there were so many fresh graves.
I made the twelve-mile bridge--passing through the cottonwood
gate--reached the “hovel,” and dropped into the wilderness again. Here
the bigger trees stood strangely bare. Winter reveals the bark and the
“habit” of trees. All ornaments and unessentials have been dropped. The
naked skeletons show I remember how I was more than ever struck by that
dappled appearance of the bark of the balm: an olive-green, yellowish
hue, ridged and spotted with the black of ancient, overgrown leaf-scars;
there was actually something gay about it; these poplars are certainly
beautiful winter trees. The aspens were different. Although their stems
stood white on white in the snow, that greenish tinge in their white
gave them a curious look. From the picture that I carry about in my
memory of this morning I cannot help the impression that they looked as
if their white were not natural at all; they looked white-washed! I have
often since confirmed this impression when there was snow on the ground.
In the copses of saplings the zigzagging of the boles from twig to twig
showed very distinctly, more so, I believe, than to me it had ever done
before. How slender and straight they look in their summer garb--now
they were stripped, and bone and sinew appeared.
We came to the “half way farms,” and the marsh lay ahead. I watered the
horses, and I do not know what made me rest them for a little while,
but I did. On the yard of the farm where I had turned in there was not
a soul to be seen. Barns and stables were closed--and I noticed that
the back door of the dwelling was buried tight by the snow. No doubt
everybody preferred the neighbourhood of the fire to the cold outside.
While stopping, I faced for the first time the sun. He was high in the
sky by now--it was half-past ten--and it suddenly came home to me that
there was something relentless, inexorable, cruel, yes, something of a
sneer in the pitiless way in which he looked down on the infertile waste
around. Unaccountably two Greek words formed on my lips: Homer’s Pontos
atrygetos--the barren sea. Half an hour later I was to realize the
significance of it.
I turned back to the road and north again. For another half mile the
fields continued on either side; but somehow they seemed to take on a
sinister look. There was more snow on them than I had found on the
level land further south; the snow lay more smoothly, again under
those “exfoliated” surface sheets which here, too, gave it an inhuman,
primeval look; in the higher sun the vast expanse looked, I suppose,
more blindingly white; and nowhere did buildings or thickets seem to
emerge. Yet, so long as the grade continued, the going was fair enough.
Then I came to the corner which marked half the distance, and there I
stopped. Right in front, where the trail had been and where a ditch
had divided off the marsh, a fortress of snow lay now: a seemingly
impregnable bulwark, six or seven feet high, with rounded top, fitting
descriptions which I had read of the underground bomb-proofs around
Belgian strongholds--those forts which were hammered to pieces by the
Germans in their first, heart-breaking forward surge in 1914. There
was not a wrinkle in this inverted bowl. There it lay, smooth and
slick--curled up in security, as it were, some twenty, thirty feet
across; and behind it others, and more of them to the right and to the
left. This had been a stretch, covered with brush and bush, willow and
poplar thickets; but my eye saw nothing except a mammiferous waste,
cruelly white, glittering in the heatless, chuckling sun, and scoffing
at me, the intruder. I stood up again and peered out. To the east it
seemed as if these buttes of snow were a trifle lower; but maybe the
ground underneath also sloped down. I wished I had travelled here more
often by daytime, so I might know. As it was, there was nothing to it; I
had to tackle the task. And we plunged in.
I had learned something from my first experience in the drift one mile
north of town, and I kept my horses well under control. Still, it was a
wild enough dash. Peter lost his footing two or three times and worked
himself into a mild panic. But Dan--I could not help admiring the way
in which, buried over his back in snow, he would slowly and deliberately
rear on his hindfeet and take his bound. For fully five minutes I never
saw anything of the horses except their heads. I inferred their motions
from the dusting snowcloud that rose above their bodies and settled
on myself. And then somehow we emerged. We reached a stretch of ground
where the snow was just high enough to cover the hocks of the horses. It
was a hollow scooped out by some freak of the wind. I pulled in, and the
horses stood panting. Peter no longer showed any desire to fret and to
jump. Both horses apparently felt the wisdom of sparing their strength.
They were all white with the frost of their sweat and the spray of the
snow...
While I gave them their time, I looked around, and here a lesson came
home to me. In the hollow where we stood, the snow did not lie smoothly.
A huge obstacle to the northwest, probably a buried clump of brush, had
made the wind turn back upon itself, first downward, then, at the bottom
of the pit, in a direction opposite to that of the main current above,
and finally slantways upward again to the summit of the obstacle, where
it rejoined the parent blow. The floor of the hollow was cleanly
scooped out and chiselled in low ridges; and these ridges came from the
southeast, running their points to the northwest. I learned to look out
for this sign, and I verily believe that, had I not learned that lesson
right now, I should never have reached the creek which was still four or
five miles distant.
The huge mound in the lee of which I was stopping was a matter of two
hundred yards away; nearer to it the snow was considerably deeper;
and since it presented an appearance very characteristic of Prairie
bush-drifts, I shall describe it in some detail. Apparently the winds
had first bent over all the stems of the clump; for whenever I saw one
of them from the north, it showed a smooth, clean upward sweep. On the
south side the snow first fell in a sheer cliff; then there was a hollow
which was partly filled by a talus-shaped drift thrown in by the counter
currents from the southern pit in which we were stopping; the sides of
this talus again showed the marks that reminded of those left by the
spoon when butter is roughly stroked into the shape of a pyramid. The
interesting parts of the structure consisted in the beetling brow of the
cliff and the roof of the cavity underneath. The brow had a honeycombed
appearance; the snow had been laid down in layers of varying density (I
shall discuss this more fully in the next chapter when we are going
to look in on the snow while it is actually at work); and the counter
currents that here swept upward in a slanting direction had bitten
out the softer layers, leaving a fine network of little ridges which
reminded strangely of the delicate fretwork-tracery in wind-sculptured
rock--as I had seen it in the Black Hills in South Dakota. This piece of
work of the wind is exceedingly short-lived in snow, and it must not be
confounded with the honeycombed appearance of those faces of snow cliffs
which are “rotting” by reason of their exposure to the heat of the
noonday sun. These latter are coarse, often dirty, and nearly always
have something bristling about them which is entirely absent in the
sculptures of the wind. The under side of the roof in the cavity looked
very much as a very stiff or viscid treacle would look when spread over
a meshy surface, as, for instance, over a closely woven netting of wire.
The stems and the branches of the brush took the place of the wire, and
in their meshes the snow had been pressed through by its own weight, but
held together by its curious ductility or tensile strength of which I
was to find further evidence soon enough. It thus formed innumerable,
blunted little stalactites, but without the corresponding stalagmites
which you find in limestone caves or on the north side of buildings when
the snow from the roof thaws and forms icicles and slender cones of ice
growing up to meet them from the ground where the trickling drops fall
and freeze again.
By the help of these various tokens I had picked my next resting place
before we started up again. It was on this second dash that I understood
why those Homeric words had come to my lips a while ago. This was indeed
like nothing so much as like being out on rough waters and in a troubled
sea, with nothing to brace the storm with but a wind-tossed nutshell
of a one-man sailing craft. I knew that experience for having outridden
many a gale in the mouth of the mighty St. Lawrence River. When the snow
reached its extreme in depth, it gave you the feeling which a drowning
man may have when fighting his desperate fight with the salty waves. But
more impressive than that was the frequent outer resemblance. The waves
of the ocean rise up and reach out and batter against the rocks and
battlements of the shore, retreating again and ever returning to the
assault, covering the obstacles thrown in the way of their progress with
thin sheets of licking tongues at least. And if such a high crest wave
had suddenly been frozen into solidity, its outline would have mimicked
to perfection many a one of the snow shapes that I saw around.
Once the horses had really learned to pull exactly together--and they
learned it thoroughly here--our progress was not too bad. Of course, it
was not like going on a grade, be it ever so badly drifted in. Here
the ground underneath, too, was uneven and overgrown with a veritable
entanglement of brush in which often the horses’ feet would get caught.
As for the road, there was none left, nothing that even by the boldest
stretch of imagination could have been considered even as the slightest
indication of one. And worst of all, I knew positively that there would
be no trail at any time during the winter. I was well aware of the fact
that, after it once snowed up, nobody ever crossed this waste between
the “half way farms” and the “White Range Line House.” This morning it
took me two and a half solid hours to make four miles.
But the ordeal had its reward. Here where the fact that there was snow
on the ground, and plenty of it, did no longer need to be sunk into my
brain--as soon as it had lost its value as a piece of news and a lesson,
I began to enjoy it just as the hunter in India will enjoy the battle of
wits when he is pitted against a yellow-black tiger. I began to catch on
to the ways of this snow; I began, as it were, to study the mentality of
my enemy. Though I never kill, I am after all something of a sportsman.
And still another thing gave me back that mental equilibrium which you
need in order to see things and to reason calmly about them. Every dash
of two hundred yards or so brought me that much nearer to my goal. Up to
the “half way farms” I had, as it were, been working uphill: there was
more ahead than behind. This was now reversed: there was more behind
than ahead, and as yet I did not worry about the return trip.
Now I have already said that snow is the only really plastic element in
which the wind can carve the vagaries of its mood and leave a record of
at least some permanency. The surface of the sea is a wonderful book to
be read with a lightning-quick eye; I do not know anything better to
do as a cure for ragged nerves--provided you are a good sailor. But the
forms are too fleeting, they change too quickly--so quickly, indeed,
that I have never succeeded in so fixing their record upon my memory as
to be able to develop one form from the other in descriptive notes. It
is that very fact, I believe, upon which hinges the curative value of
the sight: you are so completely absorbed by the moment, and all other
things fall away. Many and many a day have I lain in my deck chair on
board a liner and watched the play of the waves; but the pleasure,
which was very great indeed, was momentary; and sometimes, when in
an unsympathetic mood, I have since impatiently wondered in what that
fascination may have consisted. It was different here. Snow is very
nearly as yielding as water and, once it fully responds in its surface
to the carving forces of the wind, it stays--as if frozen into the
glittering marble image of its motion. I know few things that are as
truly fascinating as the sculptures of the wind in snow; for here you
have time and opportunity a-plenty to probe not only into the what,
but also into the why. Maybe that one day I shall write down a fuller
account of my observations. In this report I shall have to restrict
myself to a few indications, for this is not the record of the whims of
the wind, but merely the narrative of my drives.
In places, for instance, the rounded, “bomb-proof” aspect of the
expanses would be changed into the distinct contour of gigantic waves
with a very fine, very sharp crest-line. The upsweep from the northwest
would be ever so slightly convex, and the downward sweep into the trough
was always very distinctly concave. This was not the ripple which we
find in beach sand. That ripple was there, too, and in places it covered
the wide backs of these huge waves all over; but never was it found on
the concave side. Occasionally, but rarely, one of these great waves
would resemble a large breaker with a curly crest. Here the onward sweep
from the northwest had built the snow out, beyond the supporting base,
into a thick overhanging ledge which here and there had sagged; but
by virtue of that tensile strength and cohesion in snow which I have
mentioned already, it still held together and now looked convoluted and
ruffled in the most deceiving way. I believe I actually listened for the
muffled roar which the breaker makes when its subaqueous part begins to
sweep the upward sloping beach. To make this illusion complete, or to
break it by the very absurdity and exaggeration of a comparison drawn
out too far--I do not know which--there would, every now and then,
from the crest of one of these waves, jut out something which closely
resembled the wide back of a large fish diving down into the concave
side towards the trough. This looked very much like porpoises or
dolphins jumping in a heaving sea; only that in my memory picture the
real dolphins always jump in the opposite direction, against the run of
the waves, bridging the trough.
In other places a fine, exceedingly delicate crest-line would spring up
from the high point of some buried obstacle and sweep along in the most
graceful curve as far as the eye would carry I particularly remember one
of them, and I could discover no earthly reason for the curvature in it.
Again there would be a triangular--or should I say
“tetrahedral”?--up-sweep from the direction of the wind, ending in a
sharp, perfectly plane down-sweep on the south side; and the point of
this three-sided but oblique pyramid would hang over like the flap of
a tam. There was something of the consistency of very thick cloth about
this overhanging flap.
Or an up-slope from the north would end in a long, nearly perpendicular
cliff-line facing south. And the talus formation which I have mentioned
would be perfectly smooth; but it did not reach quite to the top of the
cliff, maybe to within a foot of it. The upsloping layer from the north
would hang out again, with an even brow; but between this smooth cornice
and the upper edge of the talus the snow looked as if it had been
squeezed out by tremendous pressure from above, like an exceedingly
viscid liquid--cooling glue, for instance, which is being squeezed out
from between the core and the veneer in a veneering press.
Once I passed close to and south of, two thickets which were completely
buried by the snow. Between them a ditch had been scooped out in a very
curious fashion. It resembled exactly a winding river bed with its water
drained off; it was two or three feet deep, and wherever it turned, its
banks were undermined on the “throw” side by the “wash” of the furious
blow. The analogy between the work of the wind and the work of flowing
water constantly obtrudes, especially where this work is one of
“erosion.”
But as flowing water will swing up and down in the most surprising forms
where the bed of the river is rough with rocks and throws it into choppy
waves which do not seem to move, so the snow was thrown up into the most
curious forms where the frozen swamp ground underneath had bubbled,
as it were, into phantastic shapes. I remember several places where
a perfect circle was formed by a sharp crestline that bounded an
hemispherical, crater-like hollow. When steam bubbles up through thick
porridge, in its leisurely and impeded way, and the bubble bursts with
a clucking sound, then for a moment a crater is formed just like these
circular holes; only here in the snow they were on a much larger scale,
of course, some of them six to ten feet in diameter.
And again the snow was thrown up into a bulwark, twenty and more feet
high, with that always repeating cliff face to the south, resembling a
miniature Gibraltar, with many smaller ones of most curiously similar
form on its back: bulwarks upon bulwarks, all lowering to the south. In
these the aggressive nature of storm-flung snow was most apparent. They
were formidable structures; formidable and intimidating, more through
the suggestiveness of their shape than through mere size.
I came to places where the wind had had its moments of frolicksome
humour, where it had made grim fun of its own massive and cumbersome
and yet so pliable and elastic majesty. It had turned around and around,
running with breathless speed, with its tongue lolling out, as it were,
and probably yapping and snapping in mocking mimicry of a pup trying to
catch its tail; and it had scooped out a spiral trough with overhanging
rim. I felt sorry that I had not been there to watch it, because after
all, what I saw, was only the dead record of something that had been
very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And in another place it had
reared and raised its head like a boa constrictor, ready to strike at
its prey; up to the flashing, forked tongue it was there. But one spot
I remember, where it looked exactly as if quite consciously it had
attempted the outright ludicrous: it had thrown up the snow into the
semblance of some formidable animal--more like a gorilla than anything
else it looked, a gorilla that stands on its four hands and raises every
hair on its back and snarls in order to frighten that which it is afraid
of itself--a leopard maybe.
And then I reached the “White Range Line House.” Curiously enough, there
it stood, sheltered by its majestic bluff to the north, as peaceful
looking as if there were no such a thing as that record, which I had
crossed, of the uproar and fury of one of the forces of Nature engaged
in an orgy. And it looked so empty, too, and so deserted, with never
a wisp of smoke curling from its flue-pipe, that for a moment I was
tempted to turn in and see whether maybe the lonely dweller was ill. But
then I felt as if I could not be burdened with any stranger’s worries
that day.
The effective shelter of the poplar forest along the creek made itself
felt. The last mile to the northeast was peaceful driving. I felt quite
cheered, though I walked the horses over the whole of the mile since
both began to show signs of wear. The last four miles had been a test
to try any living creature’s mettle. To me it had been one of the
culminating points in that glorious winter, but the horses had lacked
the mental stimulus, and even I felt rather exhausted.
On the bridge I stopped, threw the blankets over the horses, and fed.
Somehow this seemed to be the best place to do it. There was no snow
to speak of, and I did not know yet what might follow. The horses were
drooping, and I gave them an additional ten minutes’ rest. Then I slowly
made ready. I did not really expect any serious trouble.
We turned at a walk, and the chasm of the bush road opened up.
Instantly I pulled the horses in. What I saw, baffled me for a moment
so completely that I just sat there and gasped. There was no road. The
trees to both sides were not so overly high, but the snow had piled in
level with their tops; the drift looked like a gigantic barricade. It
was that fleeting sight of the telephone posts over again, though on a
slightly smaller scale; but this time it was in front. Slowly I started
to whistle and then looked around. I remembered now. There was a newly
cut-out road running north past the school which lay embedded in the
bush. It had offered a lane to the wind; and the wind, going there, in
cramped space, at a doubly furious stride, had picked up and carried
along all the loose snow from the grassy glades in its path. The road
ended abruptly just north of the drift, where the east-west grade sprang
up. When the wind had reached this end of the lane, where the bush ran
at right angles to its direction, it had found itself in something
like a blind alley, and, sweeping upward, to clear the obstacle, it had
dropped every bit of its load into the shelter of the brush, gradually,
in the course of three long days, building up a ridge that buried
underbrush and trees. I might have known it, of course. I knew enough
about snow; all the conditions for an exceptionally large drift were
provided for here. But it had not occurred to me, especially after I had
found the northern fringe of the marsh so well sheltered. Here I felt
for a moment as if all the snow of the universe had piled in. As I said,
I was so completely baffled that I could have turned the horses then and
there.
But after a minute or two my eyes began to cast about. I turned to the
south, right into the dense underbrush and towards the creek which
here swept south in a long, flat curve. Peter was always intolerant
of anything that moved underfoot. He started to bolt when the dry and
hard-frozen stems snapped and broke with reports resembling pistol
shots. But since Dan kept quiet, I held Peter well in hand. I went along
the drift for maybe three to four hundred yards, reconnoitring. Then the
trees began to stand too dense for me to proceed without endangering my
cutter. Just beyond I saw the big trough of the creek bed, and though
I could not make out how conditions were at its bottom, the drift
continued on its southern bank, and in any case it was impossible to
cross the hollow. So I turned; I had made up my mind to try the drift.
About a hundred and fifty yards from the point where I had turned off
the road there was something like a fold in the flank of the drift. At
its foot I stopped. For a moment I tried to explain that fold to myself.
This is what I arrived at. North of the drift, just about where the new
cut-out joined the east-west grade, there was a small clearing caused
by a bush fire which a few years ago had penetrated thus far into this
otherwise virgin corner of the forest. Unfortunately it stood so full of
charred stumps that it was impossible to get through there. But the main
currents of the wind would have free play in this opening, and I knew
that, when the blizzard began, it had been blowing from a more northerly
quarter than later on, when it veered to the northwest. And though the
snow came careering along the lane of the cut-out, that is, from due
north, its “throw” and therefore, the direction of the drift would be
determined by the direction of the wind that took charge of it on this
clearing. Probably, then, a first, provisional drift whose long axis lay
nearly in a north-south line, had been piled up by the first, northerly
gale. Later a second, larger drift had been superimposed upon it at an
angle, with its main axis running from the northwest to the southeast.
The fold marked the point where the first, smaller drift still emerged
from the second larger one. This reasoning was confirmed by a study of
the clearing itself which I came to make two or three weeks after.
Before I called on the horses to give me their very last ounce of
strength, I got out of my cutter once more and made sure that my lines
were still sound. I trusted my ability to guide the horses even in this
crucial test, but I dreaded nothing so much as that the lines might
break; and I wanted to guard against any accident. I should mention
that, of course, the top of my cutter was down, that the traces of the
harness were new, and that the cutter itself during its previous trials
had shown an exceptional stability. Once more I thus rested my horses
for five minutes; and they seemed to realize what was coming. Their
heads were up, their ears were cocked. When I got back into my cutter,
I carefully brushed the snow from moccasins and trousers, laid the robe
around my feet, adjusted my knees against the dashboard, and tied two
big loops into the lines to hold them by.
Then I clicked my tongue. The horses bounded upward in unison. For a
moment it looked as if they intended to work through, instead of over,
the drift. A wild shower of angular snow-slabs swept in upon me.
The cutter reared up and plunged and reared again--and then the view
cleared. The snow proved harder than I had anticipated--which bespoke
the fury of the blow that had piled it. It did not carry the horses, but
neither--once we had reached a height of five or six feet--did they sink
beyond their bellies and out of sight. I had no eye for anything except
them. What lay to right or left, seemed not to concern me. I watched
them work. They went in bounds, working beautifully together.
Rhythmically they reared, and rhythmically they plunged. I had dropped
back to the seat, holding them with a firm hand, feet braced against the
dashboard; and whenever they got ready to rear, I called to them in a
low and quiet voice, “Peter--Dan--now!” And their muscles played with
the effort of desperation. It probably did not take more than five
minutes, maybe considerably less, before we had reached the top, but to
me it seemed like hours of nearly fruitless endeavour. I did not realize
at first that we were high. I shall never forget the weird kind of
astonishment when the fact came home to me that what snapped and
crackled in the snow under the horses’ hoofs, were the tops of trees.
Nor shall the feeling of estrangement, as it were--as if I were not
myself, but looking on from the outside at the adventure of somebody
who yet was I--the feeling of other-worldliness, if you will pardon the
word, ever fade from my memory--a feeling of having been carried beyond
my depth where I could not swim--which came over me when with two quick
glances to right and left I took in the fact that there were no longer
any trees to either side, that I was above that forest world which had
so often engulfed me.
Then I drew my lines in. The horses fought against it, did not want to
stand. But I had to find my way, and while they were going, I could not
take my eyes from them. It took a supreme effort on my part to make them
obey. At last they stood, but I had to hold them with all my strength,
and with not a second’s respite. Now that I was on top of the drift,
the problem of how to get down loomed larger than that of getting up had
seemed before. I knew I did not have half a minute in which to decide
upon my course; for it became increasingly difficult to hold the horses
back, and they were fast sinking away.
During this short breathing spell I took in the situation. We had come
up in a northeast direction, slanting along the slope. Once on top, I
had instinctively turned to the north. Here the drift was about twenty
feet wide, perfectly level and with an exfoliated surface layer. To the
east the drift fell steeply, with a clean, smooth cliff-line marking
off the beginning of the descent; this line seemed particularly
disconcerting, for it betrayed the concave curvature of the down-sweep.
A few yards to the north I saw below, at the foot of the cliff, the old
logging-trail, and I noticed that the snow on it lay as it had fallen,
smooth and sheer, without a ripple of a drift. It looked like mockery.
And yet that was where I had to get down.
The next few minutes are rather a maze in my memory. But two pictures
were photographed with great distinctness. The one is of the moment when
we went over the edge. For a second Peter reared up, pawing the air with
his forefeet; Dan tried to back away from the empty fall. I had at this
excruciating point no purchase whatever on the lines. Then apparently
Peter sat or fell down, I do not know which, on his haunches and began
to slide. The cutter lurched to the left as if it were going to spill
all it held. Dan was knocked off his hind feet by the drawbar--and
we plunged... We came to with a terrific jolt that sent me in a
heap against the dashboard. One jump, and I stood on the ground. The
cutter--and this is the second picture which is etched clearly on the
plate of my memory--stood on its pole, leaning at an angle of forty-five
degrees against the drift. The horses were as if stunned. “Dan, Peter!”
I shouted, and they struggled to their feet. They were badly winded, but
otherwise everything seemed all right. I looked wistfully back and up at
the gully which we had torn into the flank of the drift.
I should gladly have breathed the horses again, but they were hot, the
air was at zero or colder, the rays of the sun had begun to slant. I
walked for a while alongside the team. They were drooping sadly. Then
I got in again, driving them slowly till we came to the crossing of the
ditch. I had no eye for the grade ahead. On the bush road the going was
good--now and then a small drift, but nothing alarming anywhere. The
anti-climax had set in. Again the speckled trunks of the balm poplars
struck my eye, now interspersed with the scarlet stems of the red osier
dogwood. But they failed to cheer me--they were mere facts, unable to
stir moods...
I began to think. A few weeks ago I had met that American settler with
the French sounding name who lived alongside the angling dam further
north. We had talked snow, and he had said, “Oh, up here it never is bad
except along this grade,”--we were stopping on the last east-west grade,
the one I was coming to--“there you cannot get through. You’d kill your
horses. Level with the tree-tops.” Well, I had had just that a little
while ago--I could not afford any more of it. So I made up my mind to
try a new trail, across a section which was fenced. It meant getting
out of my robes twice more, to open the gates, but I preferred that
to another tree-high drift. To spare my horses was now my only
consideration. I should not have liked to take the new trail by night,
for fear of missing the gates; but that objection did not hold just now.
Horses and I were pretty well spent. So, instead of forking off the main
trail to the north we went straight ahead.
In due time I came to the bridge which I had to cross in order to get
up on the dam. Here I saw--in an absent-minded, half unconscious, and
uninterested way--one more structure built by architect wind. The deep
master ditch from the north emptied here, to the left of the bridge,
into the grade ditch which ran east and west. And at the corner the snow
had very nearly bridged it--so nearly that you could easily have stepped
across the remaining gap. But below it was hollow--nothing supported
the bridge--it was a mere arch, with a vault underneath that looked
temptingly sheltered and cosy to wearied eyes.
The dam was bare, and I had to pull off to the east, on to the swampy
plain. I gave my horses the lines, and slowly, slowly they took me home!
Even had I not always lost interest here, to-day I should have leaned
back and rested. Although the horses had done all the actual work, the
strain of it had been largely on me. It was the after-effect that set in
now.
I thought of my wife, and of how she would have felt had she been
able to follow the scenes in some magical mirror through every single
vicissitude of my drive. And once more I saw with the eye of recent
memory the horses in that long, endless plunge through the corner of the
marsh. Once more I felt my muscles a-quiver with the strain of that last
wild struggle over that last, inhuman drift. And slowly I made up my
mind that the next time, the very next day, on my return trip, I was
going to add another eleven miles to my already long drive and to take a
different road. I knew the trail over which I had been coming so far was
closed for the rest of the winter--there was no traffic there--no trail
would be kept open. That other road of which I was thinking and which
lay further west was the main cordwood trail to the towns in the south.
It was out of my way, to be sure, but I felt convinced that I could
spare my horses and even save time by making the detour.
Being on the east side of the dam, I could not see school or cottage
till I turned up on the correction line. But when at last I saw it, I
felt somewhat as I had felt coming home from my first big trip overseas.
It seemed a lifetime since I had started out. I seemed to be a different
man.
Here, in the timber land, the snow had not drifted to any extent.
There were signs of the gale, but its record was written in fallen tree
trunks, broken branches, a litter of twigs--not in drifts of snow. My
wife would not surmise what I had gone through.
She came out with a smile on her face when I pulled in on the yard. It
was characteristic of her that she did not ask why I came so late; she
accepted the fact as something for which there were no doubt compelling
reasons. “I was giving our girl a bath,” she said; “she cannot come.”
And then she looked wistfully at my face and at the horses. Silently
I slipped the harness off their backs. I used to let them have their
freedom for a while on reaching home. And never yet but Peter at least
had had a kick and a caper and a roll before they sought their mangers.
To-day they stood for a moment knock-kneed, without moving, then shook
themselves in a weak, half-hearted way and went with drooping heads and
weary limbs straight to the stable.
“You had a hard trip?” asked my wife; and I replied with as much cheer
as I could muster, “I have seen sights to-day that I did not expect to
see before my dying day.” And taking her arm, I looked at the westering
sun and turned towards the house.