Snowed In With the Park Ranger Who Hates Rangers novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Still Warm
Bea's truck dies in a blizzard and a stern woman hands her a spare sleeping bag still warm from her own body; later the woman switches off the radio when dispatch calls.
My truck died four miles up an unplowed forest road, and the blizzard closed over it.
I was twenty-nine years old, with four retired sled dogs in the box on the truck bed.
The heater had quit first, then the dash lights, then the engine with one long cough.
I sat in the dark cab and counted my choices, and there were two.
I could stay with the truck and freeze, or I could walk the dogs to the chimney smoke I had seen a mile back.
I clipped Moose, Juno, Birch and Pip onto one long line and put my own hood up.
Moose, the oldest, leaned into the wind with his ears flat.
Snow came sideways, hard as thrown sand, and I walked with my glove over my nose.
The cabin was a low log box with green shutters and a stovepipe breathing white.
A board nailed beside the door said NO GUESTS, FOREST SERVICE USE ONLY, in black paint.
I pounded on the door with the flat of my fist until my arm shook.
The door opened four inches, and a gray eye looked me over.
"Can't you read?" the woman said.
"I can read," I said. "I can also see four dogs about to lose their paws."
She looked down at Pip, who was shaking so hard his tags rang.
Her face did not change, but her hand tightened on the door.
"The dogs can have the wood shed," she said. "It's dry and it has a door."
"And me?"
"There's one stove and one bunk," she said. "There's a rule about guests."
"I heard about the rule," I said. "I read it on your door."
Wind shoved at my back, and I felt it all the way down my spine.
The woman stood a moment longer in the gap, a tall shape against a yellow glow.
Then she stepped back and said, "Get the dogs in the shed. Then come in before you fall over."
Her name was Astrid Dahlberg, and she told me so while we spread straw on the shed floor.
She wore a green uniform jacket, faded at the elbows, and wool pants tucked into pac boots.
Her hair was auburn with a silver streak, chopped short.
She was maybe thirty-five, and she moved like someone who had hauled gear for years.
She knelt by Moose without being asked and ran her hands down each of his legs.
"Feet are good," she said. "Who trains them?"
"I did," I said. "I raced them for six years."
"Beargrease?"
"Three times," I said. "I quit."
She did not ask why, and I did not offer.
We closed the shed on four dogs curled into one heap of fur and steam.
Inside, the cabin was a single room, warm enough to hurt my face.
A black woodstove squatted in the middle with a kettle ticking on top.
One narrow bunk stood against the north wall, and a table with two chairs stood under the window.
A radio sat on a shelf with its cord coiled neatly beside it.
I peeled off my gloves, and my fingers were white and wooden.
Astrid took both my hands without a word and turned them toward the stove.
Her palms were rough and very warm.
"Don't rub them," she said. "Let the heat come back slow."
It came back as needles, and I hissed through my teeth.
"I know," Astrid said quietly. "It's worse than the cold."
She held my hands until the color came back, and she did not let go a second sooner.
Then she dropped them and stepped away.
"I have the bunk," she said. "You'll sleep here by the stove."
She pulled a sleeping bag from the head of the bunk, rolled it open, and shook it out on the floor.
It was green and old, and it was still warm from her own body.
I could feel the heat in it when she put it into my arms.
"That's yours," I said. "You were just in it."
"It's my spare," Astrid said. "I'll take the other."
"You only have one bunk."
"Take the bag, Lindqvist," she said, though I had never told her my last name.
I looked at her, and she tapped the duffel bag where my name was stenciled in white.
"Oh," I said.
"Eat something," she said, and pushed a mug of canned soup into my hand.
I ate, and then I lay down on the floorboards inside her warm green bag, with the stove ticking above me.
She lay in the bunk with her back to the wall and her face to the room.
I could not sleep for a long time, and neither could she.
The wind quit around midnight, and the quiet was so deep that I could hear the radio hum.
Then it clicked, and a man's voice came out of the speaker, thin and tired.
"Station, this is dispatch. Dahlberg, Dahlberg, are you there? Check in, please."
Astrid was out of the bunk before the second word was finished.
She crossed the floor in her socks and switched the radio off.
The cabin went dark except for the stove, and she stood with her hand flat on the dead set.
"They check on you every night?" I asked.
"No," Astrid said, without turning around. "Go to sleep."
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