Abel and the Avalanche
Adam Anders (Warsaw, Poland)
All of them different, innumerable, free, touching all of creation, creating a single pristine blanket. Snow had that to its character: to come together out of singular beauty into a unifying presence. Abel stuck out his tongue. Despite the flakes falling thick, he couldn’t catch one. Several then landed on his tongue at once. Their cold refocused him on his path into the wilderness.
The landscape rolled, undulating between the pine branches hanging low, full of snow. His wide skis glided easily between the mounds covering the earth. Far behind him, he’d left the highway that cut a straight path through the landscape. Before him, pines so ancient they could almost be manifested myths, opened a path as he approached the rugged and uneven walls of forest green. With each new sentinel of the wilderness towering before him, the white waving route whirled its way all the while forward.
Never back, never again. The parched world was now his past. At the last campsite, he’d left his worn, leather boots. The journey through the wilderness would be best accomplished with ski boots. At the campsite before that, he’d left his guitar. There was no one to sing to anyway. Here, where snow lay heavy and the wind whistled through the voids in between, the activities that displaced him in the world of stress and obligation seemed errant, distracting. Those bygone days that ran headlong into one another, blending into a toxic cocktail of doubt and loneliness, rendered him lost, forgotten. When routine became an ephemeral thing, dreams and fantasy came alive to offer a new space, driving him out of the furnace and into this. Echoes died here. Time ceased to steal.
Scratched onto a strip of old paper torn from some once-important document, he immortalized the emotions of the moment in a poem and tied it to a nearby branch with one of the dangling threads of his clothes:
Dawn starts in pale light
Snow washes away the dust
Off encrusted skin
Abel had no real plans, only intuition, skis, and a backpack of basic supplies. The wilderness held impossible promises of remarkable things. Remarkable because they weren’t of the decaying world, vitrified in its standardization, in its cold, cyclical mode of production-consumption, of means-to-a-never-ending-end. This snow was just as tireless as the world he’d left behind, only it drifted without the rigor of imposition. Here, a long-forgotten magic throve. It spoke to him in sighs and whispers, drifting on the crystalline petals of a new season.
There was something about these snowflakes, floating where the wind would take them, blanketing the ragged world made up of bits and pieces. Under snowfall, everything came together. Under snowfall, all the fires of industry were tamed, all the abnormalities of creation, the estranged, and the wild, embraced. Someone would tend to this. There must be the few who sought this space. The mountains lay beyond these trees. The wind that ran down its slopes and into the pines carried whispers of hope into his soul:
Ashes of the fire
Black and gray against pure snow
Shadowed by my shape
And so, he marked that spot, as before, plucking a thread from his frayed clothes. For the abandonment of the working world would not mean the abandonment of ritual. Traditions, he knew, were soul-born and soul-bred. This novel, poetic ritual would mark a new life and his enchanted path through the mythic woods.
Sunlight breaking through the clouds illuminated the grandiosity of heaven on earth. Light vibrated through the ice crystals and in his every cell. What the emptiness could hold was the stuff of wonder and freedom. Abel raised his head to the skies again, closing his eyes. Snowflakes landed on his skin in cold kisses. Now faster. He opened his eyes. Above the pines, gray clouds moved towards the sun. The storm was moving back in.
As he slid beyond a stand of trees, the terrain opened. He stopped. In the middle of the glade, stood a child. Dressed for winter, the child was smiling, watching the snowflakes fall in thick chunks. Confusion swept over Abel in a dry wave. Panic threatened to break him, prickling at the edges of his skin, but the child’s countenance stayed his wild heart. Those tender green eyes revealed the captivating mystery of all, born in each breath. It seemed the child’s every sense fed on the infinite wealth of a moment.
“Hello there. Are you lost?” Abel said as he approached the child.
The child looked at him with the same wonderment with which he looked at everything else. It must have been about two or three years old.
“Are mommy and daddy nearby?” Abel asked. The child only shook its head before it turned to play with the snow around it.
Youthful giggles filled the air along with the snow that the child was tossing up above its head. Abel gave a half-smile, at once amused and concerned. The child lobbed some snow his way.
“Hey!” Abel chuckled and removed his skis, coming closer.
The child laughed and flung more snow in his direction. He caught a mouthful to the child’s utter delight. Abel skimmed the surface of the snow with his glove and flicked it in the child’s direction. A puff of snow covered the child’s face. The child stopped and blinked, open mouthed.
“Sorry!” Abel said.
The child only smiled and walked towards him. When he reached Abel, he took his hand, and looked up at him expectantly.
Abel watched him, not knowing how to react.
“Will you take me to mommy and daddy?” They were the first words that came out without thought, words in which he sought comfort, understanding.
The child waded through the snow to Abel’s skis and climbed over them, sinking them below the snowy surface.
“Hey,” Abel said, walking over and kneeling so that he was face-to-face with the child. “What’s your name?”
The child jumped onto Abel, knocking them both into the snow. The child sat on Abel’s chest, laughing, and spreading snow over him.
Abel was also laughing, but he sat up and held the child, observing him.
“Let’s go find your parents, huh?” He said, eyeing him keenly.
Lifting the child up and holding him in one arm, he snapped his skis back on and moved towards the spot in the glade where he’d first seen the kid. He searched for tracks that might lead him to others, or to the direction whence the child came, but there were none.
Abel stuck out his neck and called to the wilderness. “Hello?” Nothing. He looked around. The landscape was forbidding and welcoming at once: there were no evident paths to be found, but the pristine snow opened every direction to possibility. He glanced at the child again. He received a smile in return. His heart strummed his ribs. This was not only unexpected, but it was also a responsibility, and, despite appearances, not a small one. He had no idea what he’d do with the child, but he couldn’t leave it in the glade. Adjusting the waist straps on his backpack so that they wrapped around the child and held it close to his chest, he kept moving through the woods.
Along with the snowfall and the surrounding serenity, Abel’s rhythmic breathing seemed to captivate the child. Its cherub cheeks made it difficult to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, but he supposed it didn’t matter. Only the patter of snow, the odd bird’s cry, and Abel’s breath disturbed the winter air. All the while he wondered about the child’s parents, hoping he’d hear them call through the woods. As darkness grew out of the eastern sky, he turned his thoughts to a campsite.
The fire hypnotized the child; Abel was thankful the child knew not to come too close, and that the porridge seemed to satisfy it. When the child soiled itself, Abel found it was a boy, wearing a cloth diaper—easy enough to wash in the snow and dry over the fire. The boy soon fell asleep, wrapped in a thin blanket Abel had with him. While the moon was young, he occasionally watched the boy sleep:
Uncontained wonder
Curiosity heightens
A daunting prospect
In the morning, giggles and flying snow woke him. He smiled but the breath he took weighed heavy on his chest. He was grateful for the boy’s endless joy that only seemed to grow when Abel talked or played with him.
While he packed for the day’s journey, the child watched him with interest, attempting even at one point to help place the supplies back into his pack. Abel lifted the child and inhaled deeply. The wind brought with it a beckoning: the smoke of a distant fire wafted briefly by.
Less than half a day’s journey was laden with a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. Thoughts of who lit the fire: perhaps the boy’s parents, perhaps a forest ranger, perhaps someone like him. He’d grown fond of the boy in less than twenty-four hours. There existed between them an understanding that he hadn’t experienced with anyone before. Anxiety racked his lungs and weakened his knees in the deepening snow. He stopped to catch his breath and let the boy roll in the snow:
Uninhibited
Watching him play in the snow
Singular freedom
Just as the sun seemed to be reaching its peak, Abel and the boy met with a river splitting the snowy ground. Over an uneven bridge of sporadic rocks, they clambered across. Then they came across a new space, one born of dreams, of the myth on which those woods fed, but most of all, born out of the world that had ruled humanity out of its equation. A collection of tents and other shelters made of branches and stones huddled in a glade that made a kind of boundary—a natural border wall that felt more like the permanent cushy embrace of the pines and firs. They called it Elysium. In Ancient Greek lore, the righteous and the heroic chosen by the gods to live a blessed and happy life after death would be whisked to these Fields at the edge of the world whereupon they would remain for all eternity. The souls here came from places he’d never been, from places they’d long forgotten. They’d come by different paths to reach the same dawning vista. The Elysians as they sometimes referred to themselves, were the heroes of what being human meant to Abel—seeking solace in community and an off-the-grid life. By Abel’s estimation, they were also the renegades, having, like him, refused death-by-rat-race. Instead, they chose to kill that part of themselves that didn’t belong to them, the part manufactured by modern society, by the global monetary system and its malignant outgrowths. And here they’d swept in on the winds of nonconformity, blessed with raw life after mythic death. These forgotten few were a new species, a new kind of human—one in love with creation. They worshiped the simplicity and honesty of the season, of the moment.
A woman named Sierra was the leader of this tribe. A pariah whose character was for Abel, of heretofore unmet pre-eminence, it was she who greeted them, bubbling with a simultaneous eccentricity, playfulness, and vulnerability. To an outsider, she may have seemed crazy. But Abel knew that eccentrics were the guardians of true wisdom. She immediately took the boy into her arms. When she asked after the boy’s name, Abel explained the circumstances of their meeting.
“Typical for these times,” she replied.
“I had no idea,” Abel said with some measure of unexpected relief.
Sierra only looked him deeply in the eyes, or perhaps, beyond them, with an expression of understanding.
She invited him into their commonwealth. There, amongst the hammocks made of rope and the Tibetan prayer flags flapping devotions into the wind, children ran freely into the arms of the adults variously engaged in reading, relaxing, or woodworking. One or two tended to several fires spread throughout the encampment. A couple stood naked, half-hidden by a tree, washing themselves with snow. Still other Elysians ducked in and out of tents carrying foodstuff or knitting. Smoke rose from the center of several tipis built further from the central fires. The boy he’d come with now freely joined the other children.
Greeted by all who saw him, Abel was soon sat in front of a fire and given a meal of dried fruit, nuts, and cornbread. The Elysians asked after Abel’s story. What he told them was received with understanding if not familiarity. This piqued his interest, but before he could dig deeper, an outburst of youthful shrieks and air-bound snow grabbed the attention of those gathered around the fire.
A snowball fight had erupted amongst the children and several adults had joined, only to be attacked by groups of kids and tackled to the snowbanks.
“Come on!” Sierra pulled him by the hand and into the fray.
It was the levity. The levity of the snow, of their hearts, of Sierra’s grace. Like a smooth slope it opened the way to a simple joy in this simplest of seasons. Abel knew then that the secret of winter was in its abundance. The snowball fight felt like a ceremony, a celebration of the communal blanket, pristine, cleansing, and immortal in its season, year after year. In all its chaos, it held a rhythm, a song that only creatures of the earth in their most natural state could make:
Clouds of sparkling snow
Flies into smiling faces
No competing sides
The campfires burned high after the snowball fight, wicking the damp off the players, and simultaneously sparking a long-dimmed light in Abel’s heart. Where life thrived on the freedom of spirit and place, anyone might find their roots.
Elysium soon became a home for Abel, the tribe a new family to call his own. They asked nothing of him but gave him space to be. There, Abel would find he was a prisoner, in a void built by obliviousness.
It was by a dying campfire one evening that he brought up an idea that would set his path before him anew. The fires required more wood.
“We could go up the mountain, find dead branches and ski them down,” Abel suggested. He perked up, proud of his plan, and he watched Sierra for her reaction.
Sitting next to him her eyes remained on the fire a moment before they drifted to Kora, an elder Elysian.
Kora clicked her tongue and shook her head. “That, we cannot do.” The words rolled out slowly, with deliberation and weight that somehow pulled at Abel’s shoulders.
Abel turned to Sierra, “Why not?”
“Tell the story, Kora,” Sierra said to the Elysian matron.
“Very well.” Kora brought herself forward on her tree-stump stool and stared deeply into the fire. “The beginnings of our tribe were met with significant challenges, as you might imagine. The world being what it is, finding a place and establishing ourselves required a knowledge of the terrain that could only be learned with time. There was one amongst us, Daphnis, who had a lust for exploration and discovery.”
She paused. At the mention of this name, Sierra stood and left for her tent. Abel watched her go, but Kora continued.
“Daphnis suggested exploring the mountain for resources and for terrain that might be suitable for farming with the burgeoning spring, for we had brought many seeds with us. He was dissuaded from doing so on account of his ignorance of the terrain, and the need for most of us to stay behind with the children. Nonetheless, Daphnis would not be deterred. Sierra went with him. Together they hiked for many days, ski touring to the nearest farmable plateau in a too-warm winter. When they reached this point, Daphnis declared he’d stay and clear the land of logs and broken trees before spring, and that he would return in a week’s time. Sierra countered that they should take the available wood and berries back to the Elysian camp. Daphnis refused. Saddened, Sierra agreed to his plan.
Not three days after Sierra’s return, an avalanche tore its way from the peak. We could see it had gone in the direction whence Sierra had come, and snow had slowed only just before it reached our encampment, blocking any possibility of ascent and rescue. When the snow had melted, we saw the land had shifted under the weight of the avalanche, and the path was inaccessible.
Several of us, including Sierra, have tried several ways of finding him. To no avail. Nature seems to have claimed him.”
The story lay heavy in Abel’s heart, and he followed his first instinct to seek out Sierra. He found her in her tent, hugging her knees and watching an oil lamp burn.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.
She thanked him without looking up from the flame.
Perhaps it was the tears glistening on the edges of her eyelids, but more likely it was the same force that had brought him there, the whirling void within that sought the infinite abundance of nature, a hunger he believed the aged majesty of a weathered mountain might fill. And travel wrenched at his heart and moved him to spill stubborn words.
“I know winter, and I know skiing. I can do this. And if I do, maybe it’ll bring closure, to everyone,” he offered.
She tore her eyes away from the flame to stare deeply into his.
“You don’t know this snowfall. You don’t know this mountain.”
“Come with me,” he said.
“This isn’t my journey to be had.”
“You’ll feel better, and so will I.”
Perhaps it was his determination to go, perhaps it was hers not to join him, but something slumped in her then. “This is something you need to do alone, or not at all,” she said.
The flame leapt briefly but seemed to flick in his gut in that moment. He rose and left. But when destiny drew him forward, ritual yet remained. He tied a poem to a tree with a thread from one of the tattered prayer flags:
Mountain deity
Show me your world and I’ll know
Where desire meets will
Dawn burned a rosy hue into the pale blue remnants of the evening. In that space where animals still sleep and dreams are most vivid, Abel quietly carried reverie into that first flush. The new day was a blank canvas for a new reality. The support of his skis and the grip of their climbing skins took him sliding upwards into the unknown. The groaning of the snow underfoot sounded for him with perfect clarity. The pace he’d set himself had a particular rhythm, like clockwork moving hands that pointed to every passing moment. Uncountable vertical rise towered before him, utterly remote and removed beyond the world. It grasped his heart and before long, neither the tents of the settlement nor the faces of his new friends could be seen by his tearful eyes except as a vision. When even the laughter of the children had faded, he still sought their song:
All night I listened
To the winter wind howling
At the mountainside
High beyond the world, Abel saw things few would know how to imagine. Sheer stillness in a constant flow, silence resounding at immeasurable depth. The trees were now sparse and scattered, growing crooked like forgotten tombstones. But on he pushed, always under the shifting shadow of the great peak above him. In the evening, he set a small campfire and watched the night. The constellations blinked dimly behind a misty haze. They were hardly recognizable. The sky, though replete with stars, was no longer organized and traceable by man-made lines. Shapes that had marked a thousand-year reign over the infinite, faded into indigo. Pinions to pinholes in the night curtain. Light trembled, drifted, winked. Stars, slack in the firmament. And Abel sat, floating on an aberrant sea:
In the dark starlight
Clutching memories for hope
The fire brings no warmth
When morning came, he found himself stiffened by sleep. To ignore the body was to live in the wilderness of antagonism. And so, he resolved to shepherd himself. Remaining in his camp for the day, he watched the landscape and nature move with it. The bare bones of the mountain protruded at that height. Rocks, thrown together, the color of eternity, covered in soft, warm moss.
Towards evening, a storm rolled in. It swallowed everything. A meager shelter dug into the snow became a shrine to memory, draped in white erasure with the coming of the new day. He’d found the boy in such a new space. He’d found Elysium in such blindness. So, he watched. Each snowflake held the Earth with it, the lakes, and the clouds they once came from, the air that life breathed, the memories of a thousand generations, life and lives untold, unwritten. But in it, always renewal. The cycle of nourishment hypnotized him into abeyance until nothing was left but nature.
Days passed. Time slipped away. The storm broke. The land had changed. All there was left was to ski through it. It happened after several turns into the deep powder. A crack raced across the mountain face and a slab of detached snow began to slide down the fall line. The slope rolled into a churning blend of fast flowing snow, a river of frozen water sweeping away everything in its path. The deluge carried an undertow that threatened oblivion, but two trees standing next to one another offered an exit. Wrapping each arm around the respective trunks, he embraced the wood, clinging to life as the grasping current of snow pulled from below and pushed from above. Breath came in irregular gasps, in the spaces between the cold dust. Life remained in the liminal space between intense focus and surrender, in the not expecting to take breath, but in taking it fully when provided, in the simultaneous flexibility of the trunks and their unwillingness to break. Life existed at the behest of the force majeure, and in the indomitable will to remain. Life was death and rebirth. Both trees. And him. Both the avalanche and the mountain. The avalanche slowed and stopped. He wept. And then he knew.
Nature was a thread, and in the whitest maze of the mountain, the cool droplets of its frayed ends brought him to life. The crystalline dendrites of water and ice held a manifest ancestral freedom. A space always changing, growing, nourishing in the way most needed in the moment:
a flake of ice a fleck of life
the world of life within us
The snowpack was uneven on the downhill return, but every turn was a new chance to experience the freedom of connection. At Elysium, the tribe was welcoming. Every set of eyes provided a new perspective, a unique shepherding modality with which to live free and with purpose. None more so perhaps than the boy’s. In them, the reflection of a man grown, the coherence of eternal youth and the earned wisdom of adventure, the reflection of all the parts of a tribe living in community.
They had no plans, only intuition, and the promise of remarkable things. The mountain song resounded with celebration, of a long winter lived well. Each breath, an ode, and an opportunity to dance.
Adam Anders is a Canadian writer and teacher, living in his ancestral home of Poland. His writing draws on the broad range of histories, landscapes, and cultures he’s savoured over his lifetime. His work has appeared in The Opiate, The Writing Disorder, 7th-Circle Pyrite, and The Wilderness House Literary Review. Find him on Instagram (@anderstanding.writing) and online (adamoanders.com).
