“Jim. Jim.” Control finally wakes him.
“Yes?”
“Jim, it’s almost dark. You’d better check your camp site.” It’s a few minutes before Jim can summon the energy to look out. He hears the wind and sure enough when he peels back the tent flap it’s pure white blowing snow outside. The storm has set in.
“Where’s Celeste?”
“She’s a quarter mile downslope in a pine grove. Tinkerbell’s keeping an eye on her.”
“That’s nice. It’s the first useful thing I’ve seen that piece of equipment do.”
“Well, it’s not entirely altruistic. The floater doesn’t do well in blizzards and neither does Celeste. They both headed for calmer shelter.”
A wind gust blasts snow into Jim’s face. He shuts the flap. “Calmer shelter doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” He bundles up and then braves the storm. Outside the view is pure white from sky to ground and the wind howls by his head at sixty kilometers per hour. “Control, I’ve got a whiteout here. Can you navigate me?”
“Be glad to, Jim. Right about ninety degrees then start walking.”
With Control’s aid Jim navigates through the wind and six-inch deep snow to the grove and rounds up Celeste. Reluctantly, she follows him back to the camp where Jim hobbles her while he breaks camp.
Jim speaks as he works. “I’ve wrestled some tents in my day. And wrestling a conventional tent in 60-kilometer winds makes windsurfing look tame. But this new inward-collapsing design really helps. It keeps the structure low and surface area to a minimum.”
Jim hefts the tent onto Celeste’s back. As he starts to unhobble Celeste, Control announces, “Jim, there are three food packets and a utility case missing from your inventory.” Grimly Jim grabs the palm-size inventory detector and starts sweeping the ground. Five minutes later he requests, “Control, guide me back to those pines. The light’s fading up here. I’ll find them tomorrow.”
Celeste has chosen well. The pines fill a canyon that the wind has trouble reaching into. The snow falls vertically here instead of horizontally and the trees give the land a ghostly perspective in the twilight. Jim pitches the tent once again, feeds and hobbles Celeste, and climbs inside for supper. He hears the gentle hiss of snowfall on the tent as he quietly eats his evening meal.
“Control, what’s the word on the weather?”
“Howard Rufkin here, Jim. The jetstream is moving but it seems to be pivoting on the Uintas. The weather will continue unsettled, but how unsettled and for how long is very hard to say. Snow tonight. Both snow and clear skies are likely tomorrow.”
Jim sleeps restlessly. The dung stove runs out of fuel but the snow on the tent traps his body heat well enough to keep away the terrible cramps. Finally he opens his eyes to bright daylight. He breaks his way through the snow burying his tent to come out to a picture perfect winter morning: Bright sun, blue sky, calm air, and 50 cm of powder snow covering the ground and the trees. He watches his breath as he trudges over to feed Celeste. She is looking rested, almost perky, but the wilderness skirt is an ugly mess of snow, dung, pine branches, and sagebrush.
“This is going to be a recovery day,” announces Jim as he puts her feed bag on. “And first on this list of recoveries are the items I left behind at the Gem Lake camp.”
Jim takes his time moving through the snow. The sun is heating air and snow rapidly, so Jim isn’t cold and the snow is getting shallower but thicker and wetter as he goes. Gem Lake isn’t frozen. It reflects the snow-covered pines and cliffs behind it, making yet another picture-postcard setting.
“Control, I’m here. But I’m not locating anything.”
“It’s probably the wind. We’ve done an analysis. Try zigzagging to the northeast for five hundred yards.”
“Zigging now.” Jim trudges for half a day through sunshine and light snow flurries, zigzagging here and there as Control gives him new suggestions. The sun is once again behind King’s Peak before the final food pack is found, three meters offshore in a pond north of Gem Lake.
Jim is shivering when he gets back to camp. He feeds Celeste and inspects the wilderness skirt once again. The snow is mostly gone but the mess is worse. Dung is piled on dung and the skirt is clearly not transforming it into stove-fuel.
“Control, we’ve got a problem here.”
“Jim, we’ve studied the problem while you’ve been gone. You’ve got to clean out the dirt and branches and then walk Celeste for at least two miles. The natural motion of Celeste’s walking will process the dung so it can dry out in tomorrow’s sunshine.
“You want me to do this now?”
“The skirt is overloaded already. Celeste hasn’t walked for two days and you haven’t cleaned it for three. It weighs about thirty-five kilos now and it’s not going to get any lighter until the dung dries and you clean it out. If you wait until tomorrow, you’re going to have to unload part of the dung then load it back on after Celeste has walked a while.”
“Right. I’ll start on it.” In the cold shadows of King’s Peak Jim pulls branches from the skirt. The delicate work of clearing the twigs jamming the joints must be done with bare fingers. Three times Jim stops to warm his stiffened fingers. As the sun sets he takes Celeste’s reins and walks her over the meadow. The moon and stars pop out through the patchy clouds in the east as a spectacular sunset retreats to the west. By moonlight he returns to camp, feeds Celeste, and turns in.
There is snow during the night but the next day starts bright once again.