I stand still for a moment, taking in the strength of the current and the distance I have to cover. It is less than twenty feet, I tell myself. You can do this. I walk out and the current stays around knee level for the first two or three steps, then the water is up to my thighs and its chill is bracing.
I jam my stick as far out as I can manage but am pushed a few feet downstream as I do it. I step and push against the stick like a pole vault jumper, and the current sweeps me up. I flutter kick as fast as I can and push hard against the stick and I’m able to move two or three yards across the river. Don’t fight it, Jane. Let the river move you. I try pulling my stick back toward me, but the force of the drag makes it impossible. I see it float away, rushing in the current, and I feel like I’m losing my best friend.
I’m moving quickly and making progress, but the bend is closer than I expected. I don’t fight the current; it floats me directly toward the far bank. The cold of the water strangles my muscles, and I am struggling to stay afloat. Their tightness makes lifting my arm from the water nearly impossible. My body feels heavy and numb. For a moment, my head is swallowed by the heavy drag from below. I get my mouth just above the waterline and gasp, trying to inhale deeply. My lungs feel frozen.
My legs are numb and weighted down by my waterlogged pants and heavy boots. My treading slows, then stops. I flail my arms, but the cold has numbed my shoulders. I look up, and I can see that I’m halfway across but stuck in the center sweep of the current. When the river breaks right, I need to be near the bank so I can stop my forward momentum. But I have nothing left. The fight in my legs is gone, and my arms offer no more force than a feather against the churning, moving beast.
Just as I hit the bend, the river roils and my feet graze the rocky bottom. I immediately kick back and run through the mud, and the effort ignites my arms, which thrash into the water with ferocity. My body lurches toward the shoreline, and I slam into the riverbank just before it turns sharply and cups the excess roiling water.
I drag myself up, drape myself over the lip of the bank, and hook my right leg over the top, rolling myself onto solid ground. I cough and heave water and bile into the snow. I am shaking and sobbing and my fingers and hands begin to burn with pain. After a while, I get on my knees to fling off my sleeping bag. I have no idea how much or how little time has passed. I push my frozen arms into the frozen bag and grab the ties with my teeth. I pull the knot free, and the bag unrolls.
I put my knee on the lip of the sleeping bag, but I can’t hold the edge of the lining with my frozen fingers, so I bite the corner and pull it open with my teeth. I reach in and grab my clothes. My hands are about as useful as clubs, but I manage. The bag is damp, but my clothes are dry.
I’m clumsy, but I get my clothes and jacket on and keep my frozen hands close to my heart underneath my clothes. They’ll never warm up under these conditions, but my hope is to stave off hypothermia as long as possible. I drape the wet sleeping bag over my body, propping the top shielded corner over my head. From a distance I must look like a sheik or nomad with a long, dark green cape, tromping over the snow.
I can see the dark line in the distance. I look to the sky and suddenly, for the first time since the crash, the sun comes out in full force. It warms my face.
I have to cross this field before the sun falls. A night under the snow-under a wet sleeping bag with soaking pants-will find me gone by morning.
My body shakes with chills. Early on, the exercise created warmth, and I could capture that heat to melt water or warm my hands or, with Paul, to heat our bodies at night. But I’m no longer able to generate heat. I may make the horizon, but if nobody is there to help me, I’ll be dead by dawn.