It was a cold winter evening, high
in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, when Allie and Adrian decided to savor the
last bit of the day’s sunlight by driving down a steep, single lane road to the
edge of the lake. This sounds like the
beginning of one my bullshit short stories, but alas, my friends, it is
not. This is a true story about a night
that my lovely wifey and I barely made it out of alive.
There we were, driving my fairly new
car down a narrow path, snaking through a deep forest with a snow bank of at
least three feet surrounding us. We got
to the bottom and the sun disappeared over the mountains as we looked over the
peaceful tranquility of one of the most beautiful, clear and deep lakes that I
have ever been to, Lake Tahoe.
As we look out over the calm glassy
water, I am ever vigilant and on the lookout for Tahoe Tessie, the infamous
water monster that fearlessly comes
ashore to eat its victims if it so much as catches a whiff of them. I do not mention this to Allie as we are
there, so as not to jinx us, but as the cold increases with the dwindling
light, I eventually urge her to get in the car so we can get the eff out of
there. Better to be safe than sorry and
dead in the belly of a monster.
So we get in the car and blast the
heater as we begin to make our climb back to the top. It is only about a quarter of the way up that
I notice that ice has formed on the road in the rapidly freezing temperature. My car cannot get past the ice, and we slip
to no end. It is at this time that I
realize that I was as dumb as I was adventurous on this decision to come down
to the lake’s edge in a sporty rear-wheel drive car. I struggle in numerous attempts to roll the
car back and try to climb past the icy patches in the road, to no avail. It is on my final attempt where my car
careens into the snow bank when I decide that we need to go to plan b. The infamous plan b haunts me to this
day. It is what almost got us
killed.
We can’t get a cellphone signal so deep
in the woods. The light is disappearing
so fast that we know we only have minutes, possibly twenty at the most until we
will be able to see nothing. Literally
nothing. There are no lights. No lamp posts, no stars under the forest
canopy, and no moonlight. We know our
only chance is to walk up the hill and hope that we get enough phone signal on
the main road to call for help. Our
friends are in the cabin only five or ten miles away –where we should be.
We begin our trek, walking
quickly. We have a long way to go. It is getting so much colder than when the
sun had been out. Fear is setting
in. The road twists and winds like none
that I’d seen before, and before we know it, my car is way out of sight. I feel terrible leaving it behind, alone and
stranded in the middle of a forest, but we had no choice. She failed us. She is great on the paved roads, but lousy on
the dirt, and in this case, the ice.
My mind races with thoughts on how I
will get the car out. I think about tow
trucks, wondering if they will come out at that time of night. I wonder if my friend Brian, at the cabin,
will have any ideas. Can he tow me out
with his minivan? As my mind looks for
solutions, we notice that something is terribly amiss. We were not alone.
Three large white wolves came upon
us suddenly, stopping directly in front of us.
We never saw them coming, and we froze in our tracks, horrified. Allie came closer to me, and I tell her not
to show fear, as I begin speaking forcefully and loudly, in an attempt to
frighten the wolves and show no fear. I
ask her if she can see a stick or a rock.
I look too, subtly, but there is nothing as the snow is covering
everything. Seconds that felt like
minutes pass, and we are at a face-off with the wild wolves. I prepare to defend us to the death. Two of the gigantic beasts, whose curiosity
finally subside, decide to move along.
We were nothing to them. They could have easily devoured us. I am sure that the third wolf, the closest
one to us, at only five or six feet away, thought about it. He lingered a few seconds longer, staring at
us, before he finally decided to move on too.
In retrospect, I am surprised that they didn’t kill us. I can remember the lifeless look about their
eyes, much like I know a shark’s to be.
I remember feeling that the wolves were living on instinct, and that was
the look of their eyes -just stone cold.
As the beasts walked across our path
and off into the snow, we walked too, slowly at first, then quickly, and when
we knew were at a safe distance, we ran our asses off. By the time we made it to the top of the hill,
it was dark. Pitch black dark. Luckily, the road was busy. We had a cell signal too, but the cops
wouldn’t do anything. They were not
impressed by the wolf story. We ended up
finally getting a ride to the nearest store by a friendly passer-by, and Brian
eventually came to pick us up. We made
it.
I think back about the wolves we
saw. They were huge, much bigger than I
would have thought them to be. I had
previously imagined them to be something like a large German Sheppard, perhaps,
but they were much bigger than that, both in height and in girth. They would make a German Sheppard look like a
Chihuahua. The chances were slim that we
would come across them like that in the wild, but this story goes to show that
this kind of shit actually happens. Why
couldn’t we win the lottery? Is that not
just as rare?
Anyways, that is our wolf story. I will dig up some pictures that we took of the area the next day, and post them, which reminds me of something that Allie will never let me live down. There was a sign that said the road was closed. Of course, the sign was blocked by the huge snow bank, so I never saw it until later. In my defense, the road was gated and the gate was open. So why would I think it was closed? It’s easy to laugh about it now, but that was some real scary shit at the time.
Edit: I went back and found some pictures of the location.
The "closed road" (pfff!)
Closed Road sign (shit!)
Pic taken at the bottom of the hill that night
