I had been looking forward to the retreat for months.
It was titled “Midwinter Dreaming.” Set in a remote part of New Hampshire where one dirt road leads to another, the retreat gathered twenty-or-so people on a farm to practice yoga in the mornings and evenings, and hike, journal, and drink tea throughout the day. We’d sleep 5 to a room and share one fully functional toilet between all of us, but the food would be warm, nutritious and plentiful, shared around a huge table set by an iron stove, and last year the bonding happened between the motley crew of us naturally. We danced in our socks. We sat in silence together by the frozen pond, watching the clouds of our breath disappear. We stayed up late into the night, talking about Big Things like teenagers; we cried and laughed and listened. I missed all of them. I wondered if any of them were coming back this year.
I printed my GPS directions out, MapQuest-style, and applauded my organization and foresight. Snow was beginning to fall when I left Boston, light and perfect, just like last year. “Let this be its own experience,” I kept reminding myself. “It will be different. Be open to whatever it will be.”
The closer I got to the farm, the heavier the snowfall became. I turned off onto the first dirt road. Then another. It got narrower, across a one-car bridge; and then, GPS said — yes — proceed straight ahead.
A sign was nailed to a nearby tree. “SUMMER MAINTENANCE ONLY” it read.
I paused. I consulted my printed directions: none of these street names were familiar, GPS had taken me on a different route. I looked at the road ahead, pristine in its snow; clearly no one else from the retreat had gone this way.
“Oh come on, it’s a couple inches of snow on a dirt road!” I ultimately decided.
Onward!
I successfully drove on this road for all of a half a mile before I began to have regrets. “Uh oh, this is kind of a steep hill, I wonder what’s on the other siii …” I began to think before my car slid fully backwards down it.
It’s an amazing thing to have zero control over a car no matter what you do. So often we’re driving around feeling like we’re The Boss. And it turns out all it takes is a solid sheet of ice underneath two inches of snow to prove you utterly wrong.
Initially I was very resistant. I remained so convinced I was The Boss that I thought I could still make it up the hill (”I have 4-wheel drive!”), and then I thought I could turn the car around and drive back down it, and that is how I wound up sliding perpendicular to the road, slowly down down down as if my car were enjoying a nice float in a lazy river as I panicked and braked and turned the wheel inside all to no effect whatsoever, until I landed in the ditch of leaves, wedged against a tree trunk and two boulders. I opened the car door to get out and assess the situation and promptly fell to the ground.
“Aw GEEZ!” I cried.
Here were the realities: my phone service, including GPS, was nonexistent. The entire road was solid ice and impossible to walk on; I’d have to veer off into the woods for traction. The farm was still a 7 minute drive away, so in these conditions I estimated an hour’s walk. I had last seen a cabin somewhere before the summer maintenance road began: walking there would definitely be closer. But, what if no one was home? Or, what if someone was home but they were weird and had a gun? I was a stranger, a strange dark mass advancing upon their home, just eyes peeking out from a hood.
I started to walk uphill, toward the farm. “This is exactly how someone like me dies: slips and falls again, hits her head on a rock, takes a nice nap” I thought darkly, and I turned around. I would try the cabin.
The cabin was a bit of a walk off the road, but the minute I began advancing down it the dog began barking. Big truck in the driveway, some abandoned snowmobiles leaned against a broken garage. Probably the cabin of a murderer, I thought. Probably some conspiracy-theorist’s bunker — filled with either too many wives, or not enough. Probably I should turn my hat with its aggressively liberal message inside-out. I did that. The dog’s barks got louder and more insistent; I saw a figure open a curtain and shut it. Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me, I whispered, then felt stupid for whispering it and stupid in general for making all these outsized stereotypical assumptions. Articulating my fears was the most city-slicker obnoxious thing I’d done since driving on a “summer maintenance only” road. I knocked on the door and it immediately opened, revealing darkness.
“Hi! I’m a total idiot who drove on the summer maintenance only road …” I began.
“Don’t come near me, I have flu A and mono!” a woman’s voice cried out.
A woman! I relaxed. Sometimes all it takes is one common element.
She was about my age, too, in a sweatsuit and ragg socks, hair piled in a slept-in bun. I explained the situation, the two of us shouting to each other through her closed storm door between her deep coughs, the dog jumping up happily against the class, tongue out and tail wagging. “Oh yes, I know where the farm is,” she sighed. “I’d drive you there myself, but honestly I’ve never been this sick my entire life. I’m on day 27 of this thing. I really don’t want you to get it. You know, let me see if I can get a hold of Claire. She lives just down the road, her dad owns that farm. Stay on the porch, I’ll be right back.”
Minutes later it was reported Claire was on her way and could drive me to the farm. The sick cabin-owner, whose name I would never learn, let her dog outside to “keep you company while you wait” — he bounded through the snowflakes, running wild circles in the yard, before coming back to me on the front steps and nuzzling against my side convivially. We waited a while; snow was piling in my hood, on the tops of my mittens and backpack. I eventually left him to walk back down the driveway and cross the road and stand under a tree. More and more snow. Would Claire really come? What would I do if she didn’t?
Finally, headlights in the distance through the trees, inching toward me.
The bright blue pickup truck sidled up next to me, and the woman driving had a big smile on a face framed by two long grey braids. “HEY THERE!” she boomed jubilantly. “I hear you got STUCK! On that summer maintenance road, right?”
“Yeah … I slid back down the hill. I know I’m a total moron for going on it, thank you so much for coming out to help me, I feel absolutely ridiculous …”
“It’s no problem AT ALL! I keep telling my dad, he’s got to make a bigger sign for that.”
“No I … I read the sign, I just … ignored it.”
“HAH! You’re fine! Where’s your car?”
We drove partway down the road until we could see my car’s blinking hazards in the distance, cozily nuzzled into its nest of trees. We got out and walked the rest of the way, trampling through the woods and leaves to avoid the ice on the road.
“Hooo eeee, I can see what happened here! You really slid for a while, didn’t you? And it looks like then you tried to turn around, and then that eventually got you here. Is this car a crossover, it’s got 4 wheel drive? Great. We’ll get you out of here no problem. Wow it is pure ice under this snow.”
We slipped and slid as we walked around my car. Claire told me her boyfriend was on his way to help too, and that she’d also called a friend who lived down the road, and everyone should be here soon; meanwhile we should break up twigs and branches and place them underneath my rear tires. “I told my boyfriend to come right away, but if I can be honest he’s playing video games and who knows how long he’ll be — so annoying, I swear to god.”
First the friend arrived, and then in short order the boyfriend, and both of them pulled up in their pickup trucks like they’d just walked through the door into their own surprise party. Everyone’s here!! For me?! You guyyyyys!!!
As he got out of the car the boyfriend immediately slipped and fell directly onto his back with a loud thunk. He held a thumbs up over his head. “I’m fine!” he yelled.
They debated amongst themselves the best direction to push; they debated amongst themselves who should drive, if it should be me as the owner of the car and the most familiarity with it, or the boyfriend with his apparently extensive snow experience. “I think Adrianne should drive,” Claire stated. “Look, it’s not going to be a problem, you’re going to gun it backwards while we push, then turn around and gun it down the hill.”
“Is that a body of water down there?” I asked dubiously. “Like if I slip on the road again, is that a pond or swamp or something I’m going into?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Don’t do that. You’ll be fine.”
It was decided the boyfriend would drive my car.
He was excited. “Let’s do this!” he shouted. The car was started and put into neutral.
We pushed, he gunned it.
The car squealed backwards in a squiggly wormy wave up the hill, sending leaves and sticks flying; it was expertly brought back down to us as we cheered. “Now get in there!” Claire shouted.
“You’re going to want to drive confidently!” the friend added.
“DON’T SLOW DOWN,” the boyfriend commanded.
“I want you to speed down this hill because at the bottom there’s the other hill back up, and you’re going to need to have some good momentum for it. At the bottom of this hill keep your foot on the accelerator and don’t stop until you’re out of here and back on that main dirt road. We’ll meet you there.” Claire hopped into his passenger seat and the friend hopped into the open bed. “Good luck!!!”
I took a deep breath. And then I soared down the hill, and up the hill, and I didn’t stop until I was back in front of the cabin, hooting and pumping my fist.
The strangers came soaring behind me, pulling off to where I danced in the sick cabin’s driveway. Claire gave me directions to get to the farm from around the other side of the road, and I repeated them back to her.
“You guys are the best,” I said. “Thank you so much for leaving your warm homes on a Saturday to help a random person in the snow.” I wanted to give them something: money, food, child surrogacy if they wanted it, whatever, what could repay this?
“Bah!” they shrugged, laughing. And they tore off and away; minutes later the falling snow had swallowed the bright blue truck up into its white blurry expanse. I stood there a moment, still searching the horizon, and then I got back into my car and drove to the farm. I was only two hours late.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how four strangers transformed a day for me, from frightening and hopeless and isolated to … silly, raucous, convivial.
They could have ignored the random person at the door (I do it all the time). They could have made me wait for hours, they could have been grumpy or tired, they could have not gone the extra mile in lots of ways. But they heard a random person was stuck in the snow and they all called each other and showed up ready to party.
We’re all affecting each other all of the time, for the better, and of course for the worse too. We cut each other off in traffic, we’re gruff and rude in our self-centeredness, or we look at our phones and say nothing at all. But then there’s the grocery clerk you laugh with, the knowing look shared with another parent at the playground, the feeling when a health worker wants to put you at ease. I think strangers might shape our days and our outlook as much as our own family members do.
Citizens are being illegally pulled out of their homes and workplaces and separated from their children, protesters are being beaten: the entire country can feel like an unknown cabin in the woods with a loudly barking dog. Which way, many of our fellow strangers are wondering, is this going to go today?
They take a deep breath and knock on the door.
