Prologue
NOAA had issued Extreme Cold Weather advisories across New England for Friday evening through to Saturday; the perfect weather to keep all the flatlanders away from your snow globe sanctuary.
Every Friday in winter, for the last four years, you’ve thrown your split-board in the rusty 2002 Subaru Legacy (your mother bought “Certified-Used” when you were three years old) and headed out to the bowl, usually staying ‘til the last run at 9PM.
You could have gone to UVM on a Green and Gold scholarship, but you asked your mom to stop at a ski mountain on the way home from the visit to the big city. Between your grades and a single parent income, you got offered a second full ride scholarship in exchange for being a dash of local flavor at the rich kid school. The modest slopes and three chair lifts were the key value proposition of the private college.
Tonight, there was only a small gang of snowboarders at the shelter and a few rogue skiers whipping about. With the harder snow from last week’s melt, you opted for skis, grabbing your poles from the trunk. A face-warmer and goggles were absolutely necessary, leaving nothing exposed to the cold.
It was a string of empty chairs all the way up the mountain, but as you scooted forward for your first ride up, a skier turned at speed and stopped directly on the line next to you, right as you bent your knees for the chair to pick you up. You glanced at the lift operator, as if to say “did you see that”, but Brett was looking at his phone again.
Looking down as the ground dropped away, the full spectacle of your fellow traveler hit you.
It was as if someone had been transported from Mont Blanc forty years ago into present day Vermont. Long narrow heavy laminated fiberglass skis, massive chunky boots and a mostly neon one piece jumpsuit with bright colorful patchwork. It was so very mid-80s, but also new old stock. The attire was mint, unfaded, unsoiled, equipment without a scratch. It looked like someone spent several thousand dollars on ski gear in the poshest towns of Switzerland money laundering in the go-go eighties, then put the entire getup in a closet for forty years.
“Jody? Is that Jody?”
Oh gosh, this loon knows you, there goes your sanctuary time.
“Yes?”, you stammer.
“I recognize that silicone piercing. It’s Carl, Professor Carl Sable. You took my intro to political science course a few semesters ago.”, he said.
“Hah! That’s some retro outfit you got there.” you say, as you pull down your face warmer, “I was just thinking about you on the drive here. Public radio is telling the whole country that all your crazy predictions are coming true. The United States is planning to invade Greenland, then perhaps Canada and Russia …”
“… and it’s all because of The Mercator Projection!” you both shout in unison with a belly laugh.
“Yes, it’s difficult to convince someone of the true magnitude of things when they are perpetually shown a world view that systematically distorts reality.”, the professor said. “Hopefully he doesn’t invade Russia though.”
“I suppose it’s better to have hostile attention directed at the ice covered barren wastelands rather than countries where people actually live.”, you offer.
“Always looking at the whole picture, Jody the Panoptic”, the professor quipped.
“I guess so. Lots of time to think on the top of the world”, you say.
The banter paused as a stiff wind made it difficult to hear.
“You are graduating this year, RIGHT? ANY PLANS LINED UP?” Professor Sable yelled.
You shout: “WHELP, I had HOPED to get a job in WASHINGTON, but with the way things are turning out, THAT’S LOOKING LIKE A BUST! There’s a GLUT of HIGHLY-QUALIFIED people and NO JOBS! I’ve applied to the graduate program HERE. So I’ll probably STICK AROUND for another two years.”
“You’re in a STEM TRACK RIGHT!?!” Carl yelled into silence as the wind stopped abruptly, like everyone in a bustling cafe hushing in unison to hear your answer,
“Yeah, physics major, math minor. My older brother was a video game developer. He taught me how to code when I was ten. I just wanted to be able to make cooler games with him.” you explain, “I didn’t realize that the senior job fair would be mostly defense contractors or the Department of Energy for me.”
“Oh. So you’re somehow allergic to money?” the professor jabbed.
“I don’t want to make weapons.” you shoot back.
“Then why not make video games with your brother?” Carl asked.
You pause, take a deep breath and in a rapid monotonous tone say: “My brother broke his leg skiing at Killington while visiting for Christmas in 2019. ‘ multiple surgeries and a lot of pain killers; our mom tried to warn him. He had been working for a big game studio in Portland, but they shutdown in-person for COVID. Then he got laid off the next January. He O.D.ed right before Christmas in 2022. Fentanyl.”
Professor Sable raised his matching mittens abruptly, forgetting there were poles attached to his wrist as he said, “I’m so sorry. I remember now. You wrote that paper on the legal changes to requirements for criminal prosecution at the DEA.”
“I’m so very sorry for your loss. It’s such a terrible epidemic”, he added.
You both tip your skis up as the ramp rises to meet you. As you both slide off the chair, you turned your back and shout over your shoulder:
“Every year, one hundred thousand more … “,
… dead Americans. you say in your head, as you speed away, over The Long Trail and down the back slope riding the edge of darkness.
You consciously pull the end of the caustic sentence so the hundred thousand needles might go deeper if Professor Carl finishes the sentence in his own voice.
You had spent the winter of your freshman year memorizing precision topography of the entire mountain using data downloaded from the Vermont’s public geographic information database. You misused some computer lab resources and the expensive plotter at school to print a massive custom shaded topographic map with more detail of the mountain than any available map. It was the exact width of your dorm wall. You even sold a couple digital copies of the pdf to friends.
By your sophomore year, you had built virtual computer models to plan fringe out-of-bounds lines where you could cut out of designated areas for fresh untouched powder. But a “run in” with a tree and a concussion alone in the woods ended those adventures. You only ride within the lines now.
You stop on the edge to look at a giant hollowed out Eastern Hemlock with an enormous pile of telltale porcupine droppings frozen in a perfect meter high cone at the bottom.
That’s a way to be Jody; what a piece of work.
Someone tries to have a simple conversation and you turn your back to offer them a hundred thousand barbed jabs in return. What a nasty asymmetric defense. What a lonely creature, in a lonely place. Jody the panoptic porcupine, barbs out, alone with a pile of excrement as a warning to all who would come near.
A haunting chill sinks over you. You feel deep regret at your turn of phrase and swift departure. Your flash of rage toward the world turns to guilt. So you head down the backside looking for the electric neon Sable.
You spot him shuffling his antique skis toward the back lift. You go in at full speed, stopping on the line as the chair picks you both up. You smile and wave with all your charm as the operator shoots you a grizzly look.
“Have you ever been to Monterey Jody?”, Carl picks up.
“California? I’ve never been on a plane professor.” you say.
“Well, as you are probably aware, the college maintains a satellite campus there…”
“Maintained, past-tense. They’re shutting it down.” you interrupt.
“… right, but it’s not shut down yet.” he continues, “and they’ve had a number of students drop out because their visas were canceled, or for sundry other reasons with grants and whatnot.” he explained.
“So they need to maintain a minimum number of butts in seats for the next two years for accreditation. Since you say you don’t like bombs, I was thinking … well they have collected the leading researchers and thinkers in the field of nonproliferation …”,
“Nukes are very much bombs professor.” you say,
“… not just nukes, their work is much broader, focused on preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction more generally. If you want to apply your world view and talents defensively against war, and against a whole array of weapons, they are the experts.” He pauses.
“Do they have a social media expert?” you ask.
“HA! No. Yes… free speech is a tricky thing.” he says,
The clutch of rowdy snowboarders set up camp on the nape of a ridgeline on the Long Trail and were trying to scream across Lake Champlain to someone in New York through the inversion layer of ultra-cold compressed air, but the direction of wind wasn’t in their favor.
“The cold doesn’t bother them?”, Sable asks.
“I think they brought a flask for warmth”, you say.
“Ah ha. Listen, I have it on authority, if you apply, you’ll get in. I know you’re a Vermonter on scholarship, but there is a little money in a grant for the summer (about five grand when the job is complete) and I can get you a free place to live, right by the beach.” he promises.
“There is a research project a few years old that a group is looking to have updated. They want someone out there this summer, by the first week of June, to update the data and re-run a simulation that’s already been done. It’s super easy, just updating datasets and hitting run.”
“Do you surf Jody?”, Carl asks, as he ends his pitch.
“What’s this simulation about?” you ask.
“Have you ever heard of star wars?” he returns,
“Like Obi-Wan Kenobi?” you say,
“No no, think more like space satellites, like GoldenEye”, he said.
“I broke the joystick on my brother’s old controller when I was four and he never let me touch his Nintendo 64 again, so I never really played it”, you say.
“I’ve never seen the puzzle in a first person shooter”, you add.
“Ahhh―well listen”, he stammered as the top of the lift approached. “Shoot me an email when you get accepted and I can send you the contact info for the apartment and the research project.”
As you disembarked from the lift, you nearly fell backward as all control on one ski was lost. You look down to see your right ski has structurally failed; it delaminated (split into layers) right at the heel of the binding. The binding holes failed at the same time.
After six years, thousands of runs, back-country trails, rocks, trees, jumps, flips and turns, your split board is finally “split city”.
“Looks like it’s time for some new skis,” Carl says.
Not wanting to go down from the summit on one ski, you unclip the bindings and try to join the two halves back into a board as best you can, remounting the bindings across both halves.
“That’s a neat trick.” Professor Carl says,
“Yeah, it was kind of expensive. It was a sixteenth birthday present. Cost more than my car at the time, ‘ probably not going to get a new one this season.” you explain.
“Maybe a new board in Monterey then. It was good to see you, but it’s cold out here, shoot me an email”.
As he trailed way shouting, “And Jody… you’ll never see all the distortions from a single point.”, and with that the neon sable fishered it’s way down the hill to a speck.
Gone was your evening, ski season and sanctuary time.
You limp your board down the mountain on one and a half edges, snow packing between the layers, swelling as it goes. You knocked out what ice you could and threw it across the back seat of your mom’s old Subaru.
As you wind down the mountain on the back road, you slow down for what looks like a black bear walking along the side of the road on a flat straight.
You stop the car.
Well, that is not right. Because it’s January.
All the bears have to be denned up by now. What the hell is this creature?
It turns to cross the road, dragging a massive tree branch above it’s head, like a giant rodent flag bearer without a petard.
Jeez-um CROW, its got to be the most massive beaver in Vermont. A fifty pound tank. HOLLLY CRAP.
You look downhill and notice the massive area has been inundated under a sheet of snow covered ice. You’d never noticed that in four years.
Seems like beavers are normally in for the season when you’re driving by. Perhaps the record drought put this guy behind on food for the winter.
The enormous magnificent beast stops on the centerline and stares directly at you. It lifts its body to preen some gravel from its chest and belly with its forearms. Slowly. Almost as if to say: “Yeah, you like that?”
In its glistening pelt, you catch a shimmer of the orbicular bullion that made John Jacob Astor break so bad―a store of wealth and power for survival that could be extremely tempting to commodify, at the most terrible irreparable cost to America.
What a beautiful creature. What a landscape.
Back to your current milieu, you look down to see the oil light has come on again.
You put your four-ways on, kill the ignition, pop the hood, then pull the break as you reach behind the passenger seat to grab a fresh quart of oil and the funnel (and rag) all in one hand.
Normally you don’t need a funnel, but with the cold temperature, this could turn into a fluid dynamics comedy. The oil starts to come out of the quart as one giant ball of molasses. You try to stop it immediately as it comes out, but now the ball of oil has formed a column of tacky coffee toffee sucking itself out of the bottle by its own viscosity. Oh lord, make it stop.
As you struggle to contain your imminent ecological crimes against the mountain beaver habitat, two cars speed down the road and swerve around you. A Benz and a Beamer, red and blue, New Jersey and Massachusets, both with campus parking stickers. Freshmen probably. They’re done yelling and snowboarding too apparently.
They each clip the whimsy top of the beaver’s tree as they swerve back into the right lane. The ancient rodent jerks, then bolts, leaving the tail of his trophy blocking half the road.
You look back down under the hood, you see the slow-motion oil confectionary disaster has mostly been averted by the funnel and your inattention. You put the quart bottle back in the car and throw the beaver his dinner as you wait for the rest of the molasses to get through the funnel.
That could have been a close one.
You stare at the yellow “05 26” sticker in the windshield. Last May was the only time Tyler’s grandpa let it pass inspection without a hassle. Right before his garage closed in August, that was last time anyone would ever work on this car.
You don’t really need a car; you can take the bus or train to visit home, which you’ve been doing anyhow.
Given the Legacy’s mass and current stored gravitational potential energy at an elevation of approximately three hundred meters above sea level, if it didn’t start again, does a pathway exist to pilot it into one of Vermont’s many privately held steel reserve stockpiles without calling a tow truck, or endangering life and limb with the missile?
… wait wait wait, go back … this bear beaver story still doesn’t make sense.
How in the wintry hell does the beaver get back under the ice? It’s negative ten degrees. The ice must be six inches thick by now. It’s den is clearly visible fifty yards out, with an entire underworld food storage system protected by six inches of ice armor.
How is it getting under the ice to get home to the den?
This isn’t plausible.
You close the hood of the Subaru, and you hear faint muffled craunching. You walk forward ten yards and peer over the edge of the road, you see the beaver has pulled its tree into a large corrugated pipe culvert.
The residual heat from the ground must be keeping the water in the buried pipe from freezing, at the moment. That’s the entrance, and it swims to the den from there; a culvert to the underworld. It will probably still freeze hard tonight if it stays as cold as they’re saying. That might be its last fresh meal of the winter.
But, if the beaver’s portal to The Upside Down is an under-the-road wildlife passage, we’re left with one last cliched puzzle to solve.
You do an about face and walk to the downstream side of the road to see the pipe outlet has been submerged by flooding. There’s thick solid ice up to and covering the crown. The beaver couldn’t enter the portal that way, and that is why the beaver … you know. Ba dum ‘tis.
You’re so funny Jody.
A narrow sliver of a waxing crescent moon illuminates the alien landscape beyond. There’s probably thirty acres, all now protected by ice. The den exterior is rock hard too by now. Along the edges, a ring of century old hemlocks blacken the perimeter providing aerial cover (and habitat). It looks like the stands of deciduous trees are harvested in phases.
You step one foot out onto the ice. Not a peep pop or tong. It seems thick. There’s a whole world down there, with food in storage for a growing family. It’s a home for a host of other creatures in suspended animation.
That’s the way to be Jody. Certainly beats an old mound of crap.
Back in the car, you turn the key. The Legacy roars back with no oil light.
You release the parking break and feather the clutch to get enough momentum to escape the local minimum of the beaver’s domain.
You wonder if you can take a train all the way to Monterey.
A computer simulation. More free school; free housing. Five grand ain’t much, but what’s the worst that could possibly happen?
You turn the radio on to hear: “threatened trade sanctions in retaliation over Greenland in Davos” … and that’s a NOPE.
You hit #4 to see if you can pickup Montreal off the ionosphere.
Et “vous écoutes [a bunch of static]” off a bit of a ionic reflection, but it’s not enough.
You hit #5 for “Dirt” radio, and catch a singer song writer on her bridge:
Hold your friends, forgive the night
Die to love and live your life …
‘Dirt radio in a clutch’, you think, as you sled your old Legacy closer toward a new resting place somewhere in the valley below.
4c4fc3cc76d6427de59188c37e55c200bfc3d393a094bf23c0f874a4ff14fa6b