We kept climbing and climbing in elevation. Soon the loud beating of raindrops on our windshield quieted as the rain turned to snow. I couldn’t believe it was snow! Here we were, in a dinky little Honda with no chains, in the middle of the night, driving up a mountain through the snow. I began to quietly panic. Dan was driving only 10 or 15 miles per hour and suddenly the car began to slide. All I could think about were the dark sheer cliffs that I couldn’t really see beside of us. This was too much for me. I wasn’t ready to die for the sake of the food in our car or for a good New Year’s Eve! The corners of my mouth began to turn downward and my voice became shrieky.
“Dan! We need to pull over now. I really think we do! I have no problem sleeping in the car or something. We still have some of the bucket of chicken!”
“SHH!” he countered. “I’m trying to drive. Don’t yell at me!”
“Sorry,” I whimpered, “but I really think we need to pull over. We have no idea how high the elevations on this damn road are going to go and I don’t want to drive through a blizzard.”
“Well, yeah. It’s okay. I’ve driven in the snow a bunch of times…”
“With no chains?!”
“Yeah, with no chains. I used to drive beater cars all the time when I lived in Tahoe with no chains.”
“Oh,” I said, not feeling much better because the roads in Tahoe got lots of use. The roads in Tahoe were well maintained! Nobody but Big Foot used this stupid road! “ “Dan, I just don’t think this is rea…”
“Hey, I don’t want to fight! Just be quiet! I’m driving!” So, I shut up. Things were getting dicey. Apparently, I wasn’t a good person in a crisis situation and I knew Dan was. My only choice was to put my faith in him.
“At least we don’t have to worry about the frozen food, right?” said Dan, trying to lighten the mood. I couldn’t help but laugh a little. He was right, we wanted the frozen food to make it through the trip okay and it looked like it was going to.
The climb in elevation continued and the snow was getting deeper on the road. The normally beautiful trees that cover every square-inch of the mountains began to look scary. They became heavy with snow and made the road look narrower.
Then it happened. Dan had to brake, causing us to slide a little, because there was something in the road. We saw something that was about 3 or 4 feet tall, brown and furry run across on what looked like two legs. As it darted into the newly formed snow bank on the side of the road, it looked back at us and it’s eyes shone with the reflection of our headlights.
We immediately went silent. What was that? Was it a bear? Were we going to crash our car out in this wilderness and get eaten by bears? Would they eat us or our frozen food and bucket of chicken? Or was it something else? Delirium had set in hours ago. We weren’t sure of anything anymore. My heart was racing. I didn’t want to say anything stupid, especially since I had been on a roll annoying Dan already, so I just waited for him to speak.
“Did you...?”
“Yeah...”
“I’m a…
“Was it a baby bear? … Or a baby Big Foo…?”
“Maybe… no, it was totally a bear.”
Image on this page take by Chris Hoff