Driving in Winter

I was driving a few weeks ago, on my regular route, when I learned about ice and snow on the Columbia Plateau. The weather was poor, at best; there had been fourteen inches of snow the previous day, then the sun came out to warm us all and give us the benefit of heightened molecular vibrations. Primitive cultures often worshiped the sun, but they also knew that she was not a purely creative goddess. We see that in the spring frenzy, the fighting stallion, the love bug and the cicada, the star fire and the gold that possesses more that just the soul of a heat-crazed sourdough, years gone in the brown desert hills. In this little town we saw it in the little runnels of water pushing everywhere, loading the snow with a massive inertia. In the night, the great sun goddess left to return to her usual haunts on the gulf coast, warming the mouth of Laurel Canyon, her temple at Teotihuacan, her fervent sycophants in Côte D'Ivoire. The land north of the forty-fifth parallel is only hers in summer. This time of year she comes to stir up mischief.

And mischief there was.

In the night, without her balmy influence, frigid air from the deep north swept in, pushing her playful, tender zephyr winds away to the south, sweeping everyone with the bone-chilling cold. No heart can be that cold, but only the restless undead who have given up that rhythm for a stone. There was life, still; but only that life of the dead still walking. They shushed the sun away farther and yet farther, willing the cold to pursue her deep across the west. There was a plan.

As wind moved away, chasing the sun and spreading the killing cold across November, moist, warm air was pulled in from the great Pacific Ocean. The air came across, then bunched up against the old bones of the Blue Mountains. The mountains spoke. “You cannot pass with your water and your warmth. We will have those things.”

And the mountains had their way. The moisture fell to the ground in sheets, frozen as it touched any stone, any house, any living thing; ice upon ice. It was a polished crystal sheet upon the world, resolute and cruel. All things must bow, and they did.

The next morning, we drivers went out. Some were lost along the way, vehicles overturned, smashed on the brilliant ice, bloodied and broken. Buses did not start and were abandoned, chains broke; several slipped into frozen wreckage. Finally we were on the road, carrying our cargo, first loop in the tapestry that pulls a child to a long working life of toil amongst the stones.

The radios were full of cautions, warnings, small disasters. Cars overturned, lives shattered, trees in the road, fire escaping its bounds and devouring a home while the family stands watching, mother in tears, father shaking and beaten, two young boys kicking at the ice, hoping for a snowball fight or at least an ice sword or two. Then it happened. There was a moment's calm on the radio as if those stone hearts had held their breath to set against us all the world. Four buses at once were set upon by sliding, unattended automobiles, their drivers distracted by child, by telephone, by hearing their favorite song on the radio. Another car tried to stop on the sheet spread over the river bridge, and we could see the tracing of her trajectory, to the left, tap the rail, to right, tap the rail again, to the left and across the ditch and up the hill and through both of the McCreary's fences and tipped up and over on top of Jenny McCreary's prize Elberta peach tree. Another woman saw my bus coming toward her and panicked, tried to stop, and slowly, oh so gracefully slid into my path, hands removed from the wheel and placed over her eyes, tears streaming, wailing over the sad song in the cab. One bus felt the full impact of a driver moving a freeway speed, pell and mell into a crazy, flashing yellow and black smash bang and all is silent, baby in the back seat still asleep, children on the bus tossed into a maddened heap.

I was driving a few weeks ago on my regular route when I learned about ice and snow on the Columbia Plateau. There are forces here that we do not know, do not understand. They roll over us as if we were not here, which, to them, we are not. This land is theirs; the pristine mountains, the rolling prairies, the grand rivers. They disdain our worship, our offerings. They know that one day we will be gone, and the land will be at peace, scrubbed clean of us and our worries like little toothaches; dangerous and pure once more.