After the Winter Storm I spent the next week and a half patiently watching the snow level drop from over a foot to about four inches. I couldn't afford to miss any more work and unless I got some food in town I would soon be forced to shoot something myself. I had no choice but to attempt a trip off the mountain no matter how precarious it seemed.
My work calls for me to be in fairly early, so at 4:45am I began the quarter-mile hike through the snow to the point where I had ditched my car. It was pitch black save for the light from my flashlight. I found my car covered from front to back with a massive shell of icy snow that stuck to it as though it was part of the car itself. We're not talking about a layer of frost here. I spent several minutes clawing and punching the snow on the back windshield until I finally had it cleared. The front windshield proved to be more difficult, and I had to settle for a small cleared area just larger than a basketball on the driver's side. The hood, roof, and trunk would have to remain as they were. There was more snow than vehicle. I was driving into town in a rolling igloo with a window in the back.
Now my car was left facing uphill on a one-lane dirt road and the closest place where I could get turned around was at the top of the mountain. I quickly discovered that my car was just as stuck as the day I abandoned it. There was no way it would climb the mountain with four inches of snow still on the trail. I was, however, able to reverse down the mountain, using gravity in my favor as opposed to fighting against it. The thing was, I would have to reverse half way down the mountain, in the pitch black, on this drop off hugging, one lane, bumpy dirt road before I'd have the opportunity to get turned around. The fact that this road was covered in snow and ice made the task even more daunting than it otherwise would have been. To make matters worse, it was too dark to see out my back windshield, so I had to hang half my body out the driver's side window, contorting the upper half 180 degrees so that it was facing downhill, while the lower half of my body faced forward and drove the car. Try that on your next driver's test.
When I eventually made it to the point where I thought I could get turned around I found that there was so much unpacked snow that I risked getting stuck if I veered off the trail in the slightest. The realization set in that I would have to continue in reverse all the way to the main road, meaning I still had half a mountain to go. I reversed through the creek and continued on my way. This is also about the point that my neck really started to crick up.
I pushed on despite the growing discomfort and not long after is when it hit me. Suddenly, and out of nowhere, I was slammed with an overwhelming feeling of nausea and dehydration. I had drunk a large glass of water right before leaving the house. I'm not the kind of guy that gets tense and throws up. Sure this was an intense and difficult drive, but why was I suddenly severely cotton-mouthed and about to vomit? I'm not as young as I use to be, but my body wouldn't abandon me that quickly would it?
I debated stopping right there so that I could throw up and then lie down in the snow to die in relative peace, but I had covered so much ground and was so close to the main road. My body was already hanging out the window anyway if I did throw up. I pushed through the ever increasing nausea, covered more ground, gunned my car up a final, icy hill and shot out onto the main road, bracing in case I was slammed by any oncoming traffic.
I thought again about getting out and throwing up, but I was already late for work. If I did vomit all over myself at least it would be while facing forwards and driving forward. As I drove to work I had a revelation concerning the cause of my nausea and dehydration. Since I was hanging out my window facing backwards while driving in reverse at a slow speed in a car that was fighting to perform, it meant that I was breathing my exhaust the entire way. And this was a long, slow drive. "Oh, of course! I was poisoning myself. That's why I almost threw up and passed out."
It's these precious nuggets of wisdom I take with me. These precious nuggets that money can't buy and that make it all worthwhile. I now know that every 30 feet you stop, bring your body back in the vehicle and take a few deep breaths of fresh air before you contort back out the window and proceed.
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