WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER FOUND ME, she said that I’d been lost for less than an hour. I could swear it had been days and days. Time moves different when you’re hurt and chilled to the bone.
One winter morning, I’d woken up to my grandfather tugging on his winter coat and whistling. Ice had super-glued the front door shut, so he left the house through the garage to spend his day shoveling all thirty metres of my grandparents’ country home driveway.
After a bowl of porridge that I barely tasted and a glass of cold milk, I spilled into my snowsuit and trundled out after him.
The day was beautiful, but biting. Every breath soaked into my lungs like an ice bath, and in the second it took to blink, my eyelids would fuse shut. It was one of those days that only the comfort of a warm house twenty feet away can make pleasant.
Nevertheless, I was determined to help. I said I was going to “shovel,” which my Grandmother knew meant “play in the snow.”
So I built tunnels in the banks my grandfather built, and stocked them with snowballs, but with no targets in sight, I quickly moved on. I carved betoqued angels into snowdrifts while my grandfather toiled away and my Grandmother set up her easel by the window.
Then, when the clean sheet of snow in my grandparents’ front yard was irreparably spoiled, I went looking for fresh stomping grounds.
I’d moved to the side of the house when I saw a great grey owl, hunting for movement in an ocean of white. I watched her shadow glide across the dunes of snow like a black specter, moving in for the kill, before sweeping toward the back of my grandparents’ house.
Naturally, I gave chase. Well, the ghost of a chase. It isn’t much of a sport when one participant can fly and the other has to wade through thigh-high snowdrifts.
The owl lured me to the woods at the edge of my grandparents’ property. Not very far, by any stretch of the imagination, but the land sloped in such a way that the only visible sign of their house was a smudge of grey against the grey sky—the lazy coil of smoke, rising from their chimney.
The owl blended in too well with the birch wood, and the light snow that began to fall gave her the perfect camouflage. I hunted the wood for some minutes, and had almost decided I would never outhunt the crafty hunter.
Then my foot sank into a rabbit hole, hidden beneath the snow. I sprawled forward and, with nothing to break my fall, plunged mittens first into a snowbank as tall as I was.
I emerged from the snow gasping. My hot breath melted the snow on my lips and nose, then moments later they froze again. I brushed the white powder out of my eyes and collar, and began to scoop handfuls out from my boots, which were filled to the brim.
I sacrificed one of my mittens to the snowbank that tried to swallow me. We looked for it, come spring, but never did find it again.
Though I was wet and miserable after my spill, the fear didn’t creep in until I realized I didn’t know how to get back. My fall had disoriented me. Worse still, someone else had wandered through the snow, and trails led off in three directions. I picked one and followed it.
I shivered into my wet collar. The wind tried to weasel its icy fingers between my layers of clothes and the cold stung my eyes. I breathed into my one gloved hand, to avoid swallowing any more biting air.
The trail I’d followed was the wrong one. Or maybe it wasn’t, but as the storm picked up, I gave up all the same. I curled beneath a small overhang of earth, sheltered from the wind and snow. Icicles as thick as my wrist caged me in on all sides.
My Grandmother found me there. I saw her purple parka and bright red mittens moving between the trunks, like the world’s most outrageous yeti. See knelt down beside me and brushed the snow from my face.
“That’s all the fight you’ve got?” she asked softly.
“I’m lost,” I muttered. “I twisted my ankle. My mitten’s gone.”
My Grandmother took hers off and handed it to me, but I didn’t put it on.
“C’mon,” she said, and reached her bare hand down to help me to my feet. “I’ll carry you back if I have to, but you wouldn’t do that to your Gran’s poor back, now would you?”
I took her hand. She led me to the edge of the wood and across the lawn, all while the snow tried to smother us and the wind did its best to rip us apart. She tightened her grip, so I did too.
Back in the house, my Grandmother contented herself that I didn’t have any frostbite and saw to it that my ankle was wrapped in a tensor bandage. Then she mixed me a cup of bitter cocoa and brewed a mug of strong, black coffee for herself.
She stood by the window, while I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat shivering in front of the electric heater. And she never once brought up the fact that I’d lain down to let sleep take me less than fifty metres from her front door. Not that night or any night thereafter.