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I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Even If in My Dreams
It was only 14 hours, but it seemed like 14 days. It was the 23rd of December, and I found myself under a snow-covered pine tree high up in the Austrian Alps. Alone, cold, hungry, recently divorced, and worried I might have to spend the night there, my penchant for drama led me to believe that my run of Christmases had ended.
Having set out in the early afternoon to snowshoe up to the mountain’s peak, roughly 7500 feet, one hour into my hike, the lazily falling, cornflake-sized snowflakes unnoticeably turned into more compact, fast-moving ones that began to remind me of the TIE Fighters from Star Wars. Assaulting my shoulders and piling up all over me, making me resemble a slow-moving snowman, the snow on the steep piste I was hiking up had begun to stick to my snowshoes like cookie dough (my mood was very Christmas-y). Each tug of my feet up through the deep snow was a mini-workout for my quads, beginning to ignite from fatigue.
Opting for the lightness of powder and fearing that the diminished visibility on the piste might result in a crash with a descending skier, I cut off into the glorious forest. If you have never been in a pine forest during a snowstorm, I can tell you it is one of the most mindful places on Earth…
