At Winter's Edge
Selected from Annex C-7017T.
The above video (Part 1) is the account of Harold Brumley, a carpenter who lives in Chicago’s Western Suburbs.
The story below (Part 2), is the continued account of Harold on his journey to the city. Selected from Annex C-7017T. Looking for the audio version? Scroll all the way down!
We, as a society, have forgotten what winter truly is. That is the eternal refrain in my mind as I fight and trudge through the endless, soft landscape laid out across the bleak thirty miles between my front door and downtown Chicago. Winter was once something to be feared. It was a time of death and quiet, darkness and stillness, made endurable only by hot meals and the warm lick of a fire. Once those comforts became common, once snowblowers and motorized plows and chemical de-icers became the norm, winter’s teeth were forgotten. It became a season of the jolly and the cozy, a time spent in warm places with warm food and (hopefully) even warmer company.
But that is not what winter is, as I and everyone else have learned in the past few months. Winter is a silent, uncaring god. A yearly doom that reliably precedes a renewal, but a doom nonetheless. This winter, however, I don’t feel sure in any way that the warmth of spring will ever arrive. I don’t see how the waxing green of April and May could ever hope to push through the layer of white that has so softly and silently swallowed the world around me.
The flakes continue to fall as I approach the barely protruding clock tower of my city’s small downtown. The hands of the timekeeper are frozen, locked in place as a memorial to a lost moment, 11:59 to be precise. I pause, some part of me hoping that they’ll break free, strike midnight, and I’ll be woken from this frigid dream by the tolling of the bells, but no such miracle comes. So, I walk onward, toward the next waypoint I mapped out, a tower at a junction of three highways some twelve miles from home, guided only by my compass and an old paper map of the area.
There’s not a lick of wind . There hasn’t been since the moment the snow started to fall. It was a subheading to the nightly weather forecasts, a bullet point appended to the snow report. We thought it was a boon at first, for nothing bites quite like a winter’s gale when it’s already well below freezing outside. That was before the radios and TV’s and internet went out, before the pervasive hush of it all began driving people mad. Even now, even out here, marching as I am through the snow, the ONLY sound to be heard is that of my snowshoes clacking as I lift my feet, and even that seems more muffled than it should be. I hum to myself as I march, songs that I once loved, songs which brought me joy. For miles more I plod, silently through the blue twilight, feeling my toes go from throbbing to stinging, to numb entirely… until my stupor is broken by a flicker of movement in front of me, something so unexpected I practically stumble over in surprise.
It’s a mote of light, like a candle lacking wick or stick, floating through the air in front of me. It came from behind me, and floats away softly, slowly, steadily, like a firefly called home. I reach out for it instinctually and practically cry as I feel HEAT pulsing from it, even through my three layers of gloves. A madness grips me and I try to snatch it from the air, but it moves through my hand as though it’s little more than an illusion. The sensation is pleasant beyond reckoning, a rush of heat that melts upwards from my fingers to my shoulder before dissipating in my torso. It’s the warmest I’ve felt in weeks – yet the mote moves on, as the warmth it gave me fades away.
I cry out to it, beg it to stay as I chase it, flailing through the snow. Though it hovers forth with no great urgency, it’s still faster than the hypothermic, half-starved man who chases it, and I can do little but moan as it eventually disappears from sight into the folds of the falling flakes. I put my hands on my knees and pant, and in the desperate calm two questions bubble up from the depths of my mind. The first I answer by checking my compass. It is no small rush of glee that ripples through my heart when I realize, yes, the mote WAS going the same way that I am – toward the city, toward the warmth promised by the voice on the radio. The second, and perhaps the least relevant, “what the hell was that?”, is discarded almost immediately as I begin marching with renewed vigor towards the city. I will find out, and I will find out soon.
