Winter Lady

Leanne drove with chained tires and white knuckles in a blizzard that blew across 20 miles of terrain, barely able to distinguish the ground from the air. She was fine, her eyes locked to the smallest gray shadow left by snow berms lining the street, so she followed it around each turn and prayed for a sign around the next. She knew it would be foolish to stop the car until she found a warm place for refuge. Her eyes darted for anything to break the mad whiteness all around her. When she finally did see the sign for Prosser Creek Pine Lodge and gas station, 2 miles, she closed her eyes and thanked God. Get me all the way there, she thought.

The snow beneath her tires was new and dry, and it became looser. The tires lost traction a few times but never stuck. She made it all the way over and down the 2 mile pass and parked her white ‘57 Dodge Sedan at a turnout, seeing the lodge lot full of cars. Grateful, grateful! She said out loud, blowing grand kisses with both mitten hands to the sky. She tucked her pants into rubber boots and trudged through powder to safety.

The lights were on, a fire was going, and the smell of sweetly burning wood met her nose when she pulled open the heavy entrance door. She was surprised to arrive at a calm scene: groups of locals and tourists chatting over hot drinks.

She stomped and shook off the snow on her clothes and tried to hide her panting. As she sat down at the foot of the fireplace, she began to hear conversations. She gathered that the place was renovated to accommodate a higher number of irresponsible and stuck travelers, like herself. She learned there were in fact ski runs nearby, and that the little black floating dots she’d seen outside were trees on the mountain where these people had skied.

In fact three ski runs you’d never know were there feathered down the mountain behind the lodge on the north east side. Cleared paths about as wide as a highway lane, steep with soft turns, and little offshoots with natural bumps through trees, for the braver souls.

On a clear day you could see a single measly chair lift that was just finished. The new apparatus frightened and excited the locals, who were used to rope tows and banana hooks that took far longer. “You can just sit on it like you were a queen on a throne, and in 15 minutes you are zooming down the mountain to get back on it! Seein’ you don’t fall off,” said a middle-aged woman to her ski confidants, sitting around her at a booth in the lodge. “Would you die falling that far down?” “I reckon just a sprained ankle, depending on how you land. Don’t get excited and go head first now!” Laughter.

Leanne marveled at the thawing curled skis propped against the wall, and the happy people with clumps of hard snow forming at the ends of their hair and on their clothes. She turned back to the waist-high flame, bellowing from the dome shaped fireplace in the wall. She thought a lodge is only as beautiful as its fireplace, and this one was lovely. Fearless people live in such a place all winter long, she thought. She was an ill-equipped traveler, but she would give the weather her best fight, and a fierce one at that. 

Leanne’s will to complete the daily task was vigorous to most people. Once she overheard her mother-in-law Ethel say, “she has no real talent for any kind of trade, she just works hard. It’s a wonder she decided not to give us grandchildren.” Leanne preferred and maintained the idea that she chose not to have children, when in fact, she had tried.

She thought of her husband’s smile barely visible under his black mustache. For the first time in six years, she felt like she could miss him. His shaking grip on her arm when she told him about the great road trip buzzed in her head. He was furious, telling her she’d die out here. He was close to right, but she would risk her life to get outside of that stuffy house again.

Leanne worked part time for her childhood friend Jude’s logging company, mainly crunching numbers as an accountant. On the off-season, she volunteered to take more interesting errands for him. It was a business meeting that brought her here to North Tahoe in late January. It was the first trip she’d ever taken on her own. When her co-worker got sick and could no longer accompany her, she insisted on going anyway. To get Jude on board she said, “with this client it’s now or never, and I’ve driven in the snow plenty times, you know that.” They were working out a deal with a wealthy couple to supply their new cabin’s construction in January of 1961, when she was caught in the blizzard.

“You’ll need find a place to stay for the night in these conditions miss,” Leanne turned to see the old man behind her. “I’m afraid we’re full here, but I know another place.” The host of the lodge was a stout man with gray wispy hair and glasses that sat on the tip of his nose. His nose was round and pinkish like his cheeks, and his eyes were friendly. “The snow plows aren’t on their way?” She wiped the drip from her nose with the end of a wool scarf. “Not until the morning.” He wiped his glasses and offered her hot coffee.

She wondered how everyone else looked so serene, as if they had prepared to be trapped. The sun had then set over the mountain, and the glaring white grew bluer. “You can’t see it right now, but a two minute’s walk past the gas station there’s a real nice cottage my son lives in. He’ll rent you a room for five dollars in the back house, it’s warm with a fireplace and it has a stove and a radio.” Leanne thanked him and followed his directions toward a glowing light.

After quite a hike with her boots then full of snow, she knocked on the door of Samuel Bender’s cottage. The delicious smell of a wood-burning fire swirled in the wind again and she clutched her scarf around her mouth and nose to breath in her own warm air. Ice framed the overhang of the cottage, and the window panes gathered little white tufts. The image of the cottage’s inside was fogged up, but an insistent orange glow from the fire made her eager to get in. Sam, pushed open the front door with his shoulder, “can I help you?” He was covered in a fleece, jeans and moccasins with wool socks peeking out. He started to shovel the snow away from the doorstep and Leanne had to move out of his way. “I hope so, your father said you rent out a back room to travelers? There’s no room for me at the lodge.”

“No room? That’s a bust. Actually I gave the room to a man a few hours ago.” He said, looking up at her for the first time. “He was down that road stuck in his car and I got him out just in time. If it weren't for him flashing his headlights, well I’d hate to think of the worst.” Leanne thought of the worst, a frozen carcass in the driver seat, waiting for the snow plows. “Can I just come in? I know you don’t know me, but I’ve got nowhere to go,” she said.

“Of course of course,” he motioned her in. “There is a couch in here you can sleep on tonight, I wouldn’t leave you stranded out there. Heck maybe you’re not even the last one I’ll be taking in tonight.” The cottage was quiet and warm, soup was on the stove and leather and tools were splayed over a dark wood table. The space was small but not cramped, every inch seemed to be organized and eloquently used. She was immediately drawn to the bookshelf that took up almost an entire wall, floor to ceiling. She asked him if he’d let her read one and he said certainly. Sam was handsome, and good looks always made her more wary of a man. She knew that she was at his mercy, either way. But Sam had an honest way, his voice was sure and comforting, he told her stories affirming that he was used to hosting people on the fly when storms like this hit.

He made up a bed for her, and when she tended to the dying fire, he watched her. She learned only a few things about him, as he did not take pleasure in rambling on. “I’ll be thirty in March. How old are you?” He asked. “Twenty-six,” she said. 

He was indeed an earnest and kind man, and never asked to be returned kindness or favors from anyone. He never lived outside of Tahoe, but enjoyed fishing trips with his friends in the summer. He had never seen the ocean, and was content with a simple life in the mountains. For a living he sold handmade leather tool belts, bags and even snowshoes. He built the back cottage three years before meeting Leanne, January of 1961, and fell in love with her that night. But he fell in love with everyone.

He watched her struggle in the snow as they trudged together back to the cottage, from retrieving belongings in her nearly snowed-in car. He held out his arm and she grabbed onto it. Her eyes were alert but she was laughing as they made their way in the dark blue storm back to the cottage. Despite the bitter cold her lips were smooth and red, and her brown hair that fell to her waist was in a braid, but the hair in front was coming out of it, framing her cold face like a child who has spent all afternoon on busy outdoor tasks which require running and tumbling. After this night he would not see her again. Whether she died or lived the day after they met he will never know. She picked snow from her hair and ice from her eyebrows as they leaned over the fireplace, and she laughed at the length at which they looked at one another without blinking. He held her hand in his before saying goodnight.

“My winter lady,” he called her.