And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Forty-five minutes later.

I am fewer than 10 miles from Scott’s house.

I am being microwaved alive by the windshield vent heat.
My coat and scarf are like a straight jacket.
My windshield wipers are crusted in ice.
I have to pee.

I pull into the rest stop a mile from the freeway I need to get on.

First things first. I empty my bladder and buy some bubblegum.
I ditch the scarf and coat and gloves and retrieve the long and the short scrapers from the back of the car. I remove what I can from the caked wiper blades. There are three blades and I can only reach two of them. I set out again.

I am in low gear 4WD. No speed above 20 mph. All traction.

It is going to be a long drive.

What follows is actually four and a half hours of slipping, skidding, spinning, drifting, zero visibility white knuckle terror that I will never forget.

And will never complain about.

I will never forget because I never saw so many drivers lose control and end up in ditches or embankments or wooded areas, turned around and upside down with no ability to right themselves or help their own families.

I have never had such full on panic as when I realized that daylight hours were waning and the freeway is not lit and there were so few drivers (so few people idiot enough to drive…) that my headlights, caked with ice, were the only things to light my way.

I never experienced the blind confusion that comes when a driver can’t see what is on the side of the road – a shoulder? A ditch? Another vehicle? – and therefore can’t determine how safe it would be (or would not be…) to pull over to de-ice the headlights and clean the wiper blades that are so caked with ice that they no longer glide along the surface of the windshield but are inches above it – and there is a toll booth a short distance ahead and the cattle chutes are not visible under the current conditions and I am clearly a goner if I can't take care of this NOW.

I never knew how lonely it could be to lose the tail lights of the only other car on the road with you as they pull on to an exit ramp and leave you to travel the road less traveled all alone, and without even the kindness of strangers to rely upon.

I will not complain because this was my choice.

When it became clear that the trek back to Scott’s would be no shorter and no safer than the trek still ahead, I came to the realization that whatever my fate on this snowy, dangerous, impossibly bad night, I had only myself to blame.

What a lonely place.