CHAPTER 12
Evander
All right, then.
I’ve seen my share of incorrect weather forecasts. It happens. Despite all our technological advances, weather can still throw us an occasional curveball.
Five years back, I was stationed on one of the Navy’s atmospheric and oceanographic research vessels. I met a rear admiral who made this statement over coffee one morning: “Anyone who tells you that we can predict severe weather with one-hundred percent precision is full of shit.”
Well, if that rear admiral were here with me now, he’d say, “I told you so.” Because I’m in the middle of a whiteout killer blizzard in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas on a day that was forecast to be mostly sunny with a slight chance of flurries.
Somebody at the National Weather Service is in cover-your-ass overdrive right now, because clearly, mistakes have been made.
But I’ll be fine. I’ve been in the shit more times than I can recall. Diving equipment malfunctions, tank-mounted flamethrowers, missiles, explosives, ambush, sniper fire, extreme heat, and extreme cold—as a Navy SEAL, that’s just another day at the office.
I’ll survive. I always do.
That said, this storm has me slightly unnerved.
There’s something about it that I don’t trust. It doesn’t feel right. The barometer is plummeting. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was headed south of 29.0 inches at this point.
The winds have been mostly westerly, and since I’m headed northeast, it’s been at my back the whole way.
But it just changed up. It’s coming straight down from the north now, bringing Arctic temperatures with it. The snow is really piling up, and I have a feeling this sucker is just getting started.
I believe I’m in a polar vortex.
I’m calling it. I’m heading back.
I’d be happy to come get Finn’s tree another time. Sometime when the wind isn’t howling and the snow isn’t blowing horizontal to the land. I’m not interested in making the ultimate sacrifice just to pick up a party decoration, even if it is Finn’s centerpiece.
I’m taking my frozen ass back home.
The visibility is shit, but I manage to find a place to turn around. I unhitch the trailer and shove it off to the side of the trail. Handling the ATV in this wind will be a lot easier if I’m not dragging twelve feet of rattletrap metal behind me.
I cable tie a six-foot tall orange safety flag to one corner of the trailer, providing some visibility in case the snow accumulates.
I turn back to the ATV, then stop. I decide to spin around and grab the chainsaw.
I have no idea why, but a voice in the back of my head is telling me not to leave it behind.
So I don’t. I secure it to the trunk straps on the back, hop on, hit the gas, and turn the ATV around. I let the wind push me south.
Until it suddenly changes again, hitting my right flank straight on and nearly tossing this half-ton of steel straight off the cliff.
“Holy shit.”
I come to a stop. I check my phone. No signal. Next, I check my satellite navigation, only to find it’s on the fritz. This has to be one gigantic banger of a storm if it’s interfering with my military-grade GPS.
I already had a bad feeling about this situation, but now, this is war.
I start up again, heading southwest. But I’m only feeling my way, hoping I’m on course. I’m flying blind—literally. The snow is so thick that I can barely see the dashboard.
I can’t navigate by feel, either. The snow is deep enough now that I’m unable to sense any change in the terrain beneath me. Am I on the trail? Maybe. Maybe not.
Since the sun has been swallowed up by storm clouds, it’s not possible to navigate by its position. All I hear is the wind, a howl from hell. All I smell is snow. All I taste is cold.
I’m starting to think that this storm—predicted or not—will be one for the record books.