“I have a system that catches the rainwater. Or melting snow after storms like this. There’re a couple barrels around back that I keep it in, then I designed a system of pipes to bring the water inside. It’s basically like regular water except it can get pretty cold.”
“You designed it?”
“Yes, I was an engineer in my previous life before coming up here.”
“And the solar panels actually run all the lights and can heat up the water?” I asked totally in awe as I realized how sophisticated this system really was.
“Well, they won’t run the lights for long if I don’t get that snow off the roof, but yes, they do a good job of it. Even on cloudy and rainy days, I haven’t had problems with lights or warm water. I’ve got enough panels up there to manage for a couple days even if there was no sunlight at all.”
“That’s amazing, Caleb. Really, you are impressive,” I said with genuine awe. “I can’t even figure out how to turn my toaster oven on to the right temperature. This is really cool.”
Caleb nodded his head and smiled slightly. He was a closed off sort of guy. Definitely not interested in telling me all about his life. I wanted to ask him a dozen more follow up questions, but he clearly wasn’t interested in talking. I decided it was best to back off a little and let him go back to sleep, and I could drink my coffee.
“The water will boil,” Caleb said pointing to his teapot. “Then pour it over the instant coffee. Use a pot holder so you don’t burn yourself,” he said. His voice was dry and flat, and he hardly looked at me before going back to his room.
I wanted to ask what there was to eat and if I could try to cook something on the stove, but I figured I shouldn’t push my luck. We had gotten off to a good start that morning, and maybe I’d be able to keep my attitude in check, so we could have a good day. Of course, that would also depend on how much of a chauvinist Caleb decided to be, but after a good night’s sleep, I was optimistic for our new day.
As the water came to a boil, I was ready and waiting so the teapot wouldn’t make too much noise. I had the pot holder in my hand and quickly pulled it off the stove and poured the boiling water into my coffee cup.
“Oatmeal,” I said to myself as I looked through the cupboards to see if he had any. “I could make oatmeal.”
Sure enough, he had a large plastic container filled with oatmeal. It only took me a moment to scoop some out and into a bowl, and within minutes I was sitting at the table eating a big bowl of oatmeal and sipping on coffee. It wasn’t ideal, but this breakfast hit the spot like nothing I’d had in a very long time.
Carbs again. I was beginning to realize the only two choices for food at Caleb’s cabin were protein and carbohydrates. He didn’t strike me as the sort of guy who would have canned fruit around or anything like that, but I could have really gone for some canned apples or peaches.
After breakfast, I cleaned up my mess and poured another cup of coffee before the water got too cold. Instant coffee wasn’t my favorite, but on that morning, it couldn’t have tasted any better.
I stood looking out at the shed and sipping my black cup of caffeine as the sun came up. It was looking like a beautiful day. There were no clouds at all, and the sun was going to have time to start melting away some of the snow. Maybe Caleb was wrong, and we could get down the mountain after all.
It was nearly noon when I finally decided to put my boots and coat on and go outside. I’d cleaned the entire house, although it wasn’t all that dirty to begin with, and I had finished reading all the magazines he had. There was a large bookshelf in the corner, and I was about to grab a book to read when I decided I’d shovel the path to the shed and load some wood onto the front porch.
As soon as I stepped foot outside, I felt the warmth of the sun. It was an amazing feeling, and all the dread I’d had over being stuck in the cabin for weeks just fell away. It was only going to take a day or two of warm weather like this, and I could make it back down the mountain. I was sure of it.
I re-shoveled the path to the shed and made a nice path around the woodpile as well. I cleared off the snow from the front porch and carried at least ten loads of wood up and piled it neatly on the side of the porch. I wasn’t sure what Caleb wanted to cover the wood with, though, so I left it alone and made my way back to the shed.
In the light of day, and without the pain of frozen feet, I was in awe of the cabin and shed that Caleb had built. I still couldn’t believe he had built the whole thing on his own and suspected that he had at least one other person helping him at some point in the process. How else would he have got those heavy logs to stay put? As I tried to open the shed, it seemed like there was something stuck in front of it. The doorknob turned, but the door wouldn’t open at all. It seemed rather odd to me, but after putting my whole weight against the door and still not getting it to open, I decided to take a look around the rest of the property.
Technically, I had no idea what part of the land was Caleb’s property and what part was just pure mountain, but I was just going to walk around a little and see what was out there. Perhaps I could even see the road down at the bottom of the mountain or see a way for me to make it down there.
First, I walked down the hill a little, but the snow was getting into my boots, and I felt like I could tumble into a giant snowball at any moment. Then I started walking across the mountain. It was steep and impossible to see what was below me. Sometimes I took a step and felt a downed tree under my feet, and one time I stepped, and my foot went into a hole and the snow came all the way up to my thigh.
The sun was the only thing making my walk bearable, though. Even with the snow in my boots, I didn’t feel all that cold. The pillowy white snow was light and beautiful. If I hadn’t been stuck in the mountains, I would have loved to go skiing in this sort of powdered snow.
I turned to look at my footsteps behind me and make sure I could still see Caleb’s cabin. The last thing I wanted to do was get myself lost in the woods after being rescued only a short time before. The cabin was way off in the distance, but I could still see it, so I continued. There were just trees and snow as far as I could see, and it didn’t look like I was going to have any luck seeing the road down at the bottom of the mountain.
When I finally gave up my journey, I turned back toward the house, and my heart stopped. It froze as if the Devil himself was standing there staring at me. Standing right by the shed was a man. It was a long way away, and I couldn’t make out who the man was, but as I looked at him, I could have sworn it was Peter. His hair was cut, and he didn’t have a beard, but for a brief moment, I froze in fear that it was him.
I rubbed my eyes and looked back again, sure that I had been imagining things, and sure enough, there wasn’t anyone there. Why would I even think Peter would be up in the mountains? And what made me feel so afraid? The last time I’d seen him, he was nice to me. I had actually felt relief that he was living a good life. There was no reason at all for me to think he would be up in the mountains. I clearly had just imagined him there.
“Wow Jordan, get it together.” I laughed to myself.
Maybe I was more out of it than I thought. I jumped up and down and did some exercises to wake up. But I wasn’t feeling especially tired. Then, as my foot came down into the snow, I felt the snow sliding out from under me.
The snow all around me was moving. It was sliding down the hill, and I was going with it. There was nothing I could do. I reached for a tree, but it flew past me faster than my hands could move. I reached for another one and then another one, and I couldn’t grab them fast enough.
As my body slid down the hill, the snow started to engulf me, and I was certain I was going to die. This tiny patch of snow was growing as I moved down the mountain. I was caught in an avalanche.
“Help!” I screamed in hopes that Caleb might be awake and would hear me. But I knew it was no use. I was a long way away from the cabin and moving farther away every moment.
I didn’t have the chance to slide a
ll the way down the hill; instead, I felt the snow disappear below me, and momentarily I was in the air. I reached around for anything to grab onto but before I knew it I came to a hard stop.
I’d landed. I wasn’t moving any longer.
I was covered in snow, and I started to whip my arms and legs around trying to figure out if I was hurt or not. The shock of the whole thing had me so stunned that I felt like I couldn’t breathe, or maybe I’d broken a rib? I really had no idea.
As I moved my hands around, I stopped suddenly when I felt a ledge. Quickly I sat up and took inventory of where I was. I looked up and saw the ledge that I’d just fallen from. It was only a few feet above me, but it might as well have been a mile; there was no way I was getting back up there.
I was lying on a small ledge of about ten feet in width. It was what saved me from falling the rest of the way off the cliff that went another thirty or forty feet down.
My heart pounded in my chest so hard that I thought I would pass out. It was possible that I was way too far away from the cabin for Caleb to even figure out where I was. I’d walked for at least fifteen minutes and then slid for who knows how long.
“Caleb! Help!” I screamed in an effort to get his attention.
I continued to scream. Luckily the sun was out, and I took a few minutes to clear the snow from my boots and my clothing, but I was still cold. Even the sun couldn’t make snow warm to the body.
It was nearly an hour later when I decided I had to try and climb up the ledge. It was dirt, but it was frozen, so perhaps I could manage to get my footing and make it to the top.
For the first step, I had a good hold of a rock and placed my shoe in just the right spot to reach up. I managed one more quick step up and then had my fingers touching the top of the ledge, but there was nothing to grab up there, and I quickly lost my grip and fell back to the landing I had been on.
Not only did I fall, but I was so out of control that I almost slipped off the landing. There was no way I was trying to climb that cliff again, I thought.
“Caleb!” I screamed again desperate for him to hear me.
I was so stupid. He told me not to leave the cabin, and the first thing I did when I got bored was leave. Now I was trapped on the side of the mountain and barely able to stay safe. If Caleb didn’t find me soon, I was going to have to deal with frozen toes again, and I absolutely didn’t want to go through that pain all over. Plus, it was going to get dark sooner or later. I couldn’t survive outside in all this snow overnight. There was absolutely no way. I would freeze to death for sure if I didn’t end up slipping right off the mountain sometime in the night.
“Caleb! Help!” I screamed again. “Caleb, please. Oh, please wake up!” I screamed over and over. Even when my voice was getting raspy, and I thought I couldn’t possibly scream again, I did. It was my only hope. Caleb was my only hope.
He had to wake up and realize I wasn’t there. He was going to go out and look for me, and he was going to see my footprints; I just knew it. But then another thought came to my mind. It wasn’t a good thought at all, and panic rushed through me as I processed it. What if Caleb thought I’d left to go down the mountain? He would go outside and see that I put that wood there and might think that it was some sort of peace offering and that I’d decided to head down the mountain alone. Would he think that? Would he possibly think that I would try to leave without saying goodbye to him or anything?
I didn’t know Caleb well enough to know what he would think, but I had caused a lot of trouble in my day with him. It was entirely possible that he would wake up and be happy that he was rid of me.
Chapter 10
Caleb
Having a house guest wasn’t cool at all. I went back to bed and purposely slept as late as possible to avoid any more outbursts between Jordan and me. Our brief morning conversation had gone well enough, but that wasn’t saying much with this girl. It was only a matter of time before she was insisting that I was the biggest jerk in the world again.
“Hey, if you’re hungry …” I started to say before I realized Jordan wasn’t in the living room. I glanced toward the bathroom and saw the door wide open and then I glanced at the front door, where all of Jordan’s winter clothing was gone. She’d actually ignored what I said and went outside without me. Clearly, she was horrible at listening to directions.
Not only was it dangerous to be out in this deep snow, but it was entirely possible that the mountain animals would be making their way toward my cabin. Most of the animals had moved down to a warmer climate, but since the weather had been so unseasonably warm, I wouldn’t be surprised if a mountain lion or bear was still around this area.
“Jordan,” I yelled out the front door toward the shed. There was a pile of wood on the porch and a freshly dug path to the shed. The shed door was slightly ajar, and I figured she had probably found my pile of junk in there and was trying to figure out what on earth I needed all those pieces for.
I let her enjoy her snooping for a few minutes as I ate a little beef jerky and started boiling more water for coffee. But by the time my coffee was done, I was beginning to worry. If Jordan was in the shed, she was spending an awful lot of time looking at my junk.
Reluctantly, I got dressed and made my way out to the shed. As I opened it, I was prepared to see Jordan and instead just saw my messy shed and nothing else. She wasn’t in there.
“Jordan?” I said loudly and walked around the shed.
I could see some footprints walking away from the cabin, but I didn’t know which set to follow. There was one set that went down the hill and another that went up the hill. I looked both ways and didn’t see her at all, though.
If I had to make an educated guess, I thought Jordan probably went up the hill first and then came back down when she realized nothing was up there. So I followed the trail of steps that led away from the cabin and down the hill.
After walking about one hundred feet from the house, it dawned on me; there was a set of steps going up toward the road but not coming back down to the house. There was a second set going down the hill, but also not coming back toward the house. I had no idea how on earth Jordan had managed to do that; maybe she was playing some sort of joke on me.
Jordan’s footsteps were small, and I could cover two of her steps in the length of one of mine. After going downhill for a little bit, the steps turned and started to go across the mountain. I felt my blood pressure rising as I tried to figure out what was going on and why Jordan hadn’t listened to me. She couldn’t have thought it was safe to be out in this weather.
She was told not to go out without me, but she did it anyway. Not only had Jordan left the house, but she went a long way from the house. Luckily, it was a nice day out, and wherever she had gone off to, she shouldn’t be too cold. I was just going to have to follow the footsteps until I caught up with her.
As I continued following the footsteps, I came across an area where they were all jumbled up in a mess. It looked like she had been running around in circles, but then the steps just disappeared. My heart sank as I realized the snow around that area had shifted downhill. There was a clearing of snow which formed a path down the mountain.
“Jordan!” I yelled and quickly followed the path of snow down the mountain.
My optimistic attitude vaporized as I ran down the mountain trying to find where the slippage of snow finally stopped. She was dead; I just knew it. This was exactly why I didn’t want her walking around out here on her own. With two feet of snow on the ground, there was no way to ensure an area was stable enough to walk on. Plus, Jordan didn’t know this area, and she had no idea of all the cliffs there were. Sure, it was warm out, but if she was covered in snow or had fallen off a cliff, that wasn’t going to matter.
My pulse was pounding in my head so hard that I could hardly think straight. But off in the distance, I could have sworn that I heard Jordan’s voice. I looked up into the snow-covered trees but didn’t see her up there. I don’t even know what made
me look up; it was ridiculous to think she would have climbed up a tree. Unless maybe she had seen a bear or mountain lion. Then I turned around and looked behind me and even back toward the cabin. Jordan wasn’t anywhere.
“Jordan!” I yelled. “Where are you?”
I didn’t expect to hear an answer, but then I heard her off in the distance. She was far away, yet close enough that I could hear her.
“Jordan?” I said again.
“I’m down here,” she said again, and this time, I knew where it was coming from.
I hurried down the hill and looked over the edge of the cliff. To my astonishment, there was Jordan, standing on a ledge about ten feet down. She was lucky to be alive. That snow could have easily carried her all the way down to her death.
“You didn’t listen!” I started to yell. “You are so lucky you didn’t die. I told you not to leave without me. It’s dangerous out here. I wasn’t just saying that to hear myself talk. I actually didn’t want you to die.” I was yelling, and not just a little bit. I heard the anger and rage in my voice and wanted to calm down, but I couldn’t stop. How could someone care so little about their well-being? This girl had a death wish or something, and I wasn’t about to be part of it.
“I’m sorry. You were right,” she said without any hesitation.
Her voice cracked with emotion as she looked up at me. Jordan didn’t argue, she didn’t deny any of it. Her eyes filled with tears as silence packed the moment between us.
She was standing there looking up at me with such a pitiful expression that I couldn’t help calming down. I had to get her up and out of there. We could discuss why she took off on her own later, but for the time being, she needed rescuing, and I was the only one who could help her.
“Okay, is that ledge sturdy enough? Do we have a minute to figure this out?” I asked as I finally calmed myself down.
“Yes, I’m okay, but I tried climbing up, and I can’t do it.”
“It’s okay. Let me think for a second.”
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