A lot for which to live ~ November 7, 1991

David Heiller

The wind was blowing hard out of the northwest last Friday afternoon, carrying snow like little bullets against our faces. Already, about 16 inches of snow lay on the ground.

Malika and I were playing in it, after nearly going crazy with cabin fever for much of the day. First I made a snow angel, which Mollie promptly trudged through with a wild, cabin fever laugh. Then I dove through the air and landed on my back in a big drift.

Noah

Mollie went off to make more snow angels. I lay there, out of the wind, feeling the snow tickle my face, feeling the soft bed of snow underneath, feeling quite comfortable.

Then a memory flashed into my mind. No, something more powerful than a memory, a sensation that made my face quiver first with fear, then with anger.

It had happened in November of 1973. I had been backpacking in Yosemite National Park in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. A blizzard had caught me there, unprepared and alone, 20-plus miles from park headquarters.

The storm lasted all day Saturday and Sunday. The wind blasted my pup tent, even in the pine trees where I had set up. Snow pressed in on the sides like a torture chamber from an Edgar Allen Poe story. My dire predicament stared at me like an ugly sore. I was cold, stranded, alone, and no one knew where I was. What little sleep I got was filled with nightmares. I thought constantly of family, friends, Camp Courage. And I was scared, very scared.

The storm ended Monday morning. I crawled from my tent into a new world. The ground had been bare on Saturday. Now snow lay everywhere, lots of snow. But that wouldn't stop me! I hastily packed everything, threw the 50-pound pack on my back, and started hiking.

Malika

As I left the protection of the pines, every step got deeper. Finally I hit a hole that sucked me up to my waist. I could barely move. I struggled for a few seconds, then relaxed. The snow was comfortable, like a water bed. The weight of the pack was gone.

For a few moments, I felt like staying right there. I was cold and numb, yet strangely at rest.

I felt like falling asleep. It would be so easy. That would get me out of this fix. But something stopped me. Something made me pull myself from the snow drift and trudge back to the pines, and set the tent up, and struggle for the next 17 days to make my way back to civilization.

What was that something? I don't know, but I saw it in that snowbank. It wasn't a vision of death, or a single revelation. It was more a mixture: of fear of death, of loved ones, of anger because I did not want to give up. In that instant I realized that I had too much to live for.

I haven't thought about all this for about 18 years, but lying in the snow last Friday, with my mind relaxed, the experience returned.

Then Mollie came plowing on top of me, and reality returned and the memories were gone, maybe for another 18 years.

A lot has happened in that time span, mostly good, some bad, mostly happy, some sad. But looking at my daughter's smiling face in the falling snow last Friday, I realized, for the umpteenth time, that I do indeed have a lot for which to live.