Where the Snow Remembers

The snow started before dawn, thin, breathy stuff that barely looked real. The kind that comes in quietly and changes everything before you know it. Boss, my old Shepherd, was already pacing at the door, pack strapped tight, like he knew exactly what we were doing. I guess he did. Dogs remember the things we try to forget.

We were headed back to the cabin that Ryan and I built. It sits behind a mess of evergreens, half-hidden from the world; no GPS ever finds it. I always liked that about the place—even before he disappeared. Now it feels like the land keeps it tucked away on purpose, as if it understands grief better than people do.

Three years have passed since his disappearance. They claimed he was lost in a storm, as if that explanation holds any real significance. Storms don’t take people neatly. They swallow, scatter, and hide. But the lake kept quiet about where it put him. And the trees never said a word.

I come back every winter. I tell people it’s for the quiet, for the air, for the walk. Truth? I just can’t quite leave him there.

Boss and I moved in a steady rhythm, snowshoes squeaking on the crusted path. The cold worked through my gloves, sharp and honest. Each step felt like a talk with memory. The trail curved through the old birch stand, branches arched overhead like ribs. The place held its kind of silence—not empty, more like it was listening.

By the time we reached the foot of the ridge, the sky had shifted to that pale, washed-out blue that winter uses when it’s not ready to commit to daylight. The climb was steeper than I remembered. Or maybe I was just older than I wanted to admit. Each step pressed something loose inside me.

Halfway up, I stopped. The valley stretched wide and white beneath us, the kind of white that hides and reveals everything at the same time. The wind shifted, bringing the faint scent of cedar and distant water. It pulled me back to a day before everything went wrong—Ryan and I standing on this very ridge, arguing about whether the world sounded different after the first snowfall. He swore the snow made things louder and said it pushed sound upward. I said it swallowed up everything. He laughed and said I only liked silence because it couldn’t argue back. I pushed him. He pushed me. We slid down half the ridge on our backsides like kids too dumb to know better. That was the last winter we were both whole.

The boss nudged my knee, impatient or worried; it was hard to tell. His breath fogged the air, small puffs rising like smoke signals. I took a breath that didn’t quite fill my lungs and kept climbing.

The closer we got to the cabin, the tighter something in my chest pulled—a rope wound years ago that never loosened. Snow deepened, softening the world into shapes that barely held edges. The air felt different here, thicker, as if the land remembered the last time it hurt me.

When the roofline finally appeared between the trees, I stopped again. The cabin appeared more compact than I recalled how spaces contract when their inhabitants depart. Frost coated the windows. A drift curled against the door like a sleeping animal. Nothing was disturbed. That alone unsettled me. Even abandoned places usually pick up a few scars.

Boss trotted ahead, sniffing the perimeter, tail low but steady. He paused at the front step and let out a low whine—not warning, not fear. Recognition, maybe. He’d been here with Ryan, too.

I stepped onto the porch. The wood groaned under my weight, a familiar sound that hit deeper than it should have. I reached for the door handle, cold metal biting my palm, and for a second, a memory flared—the last morning I saw Ryan.

He was tying his boots, grinning like he had a secret. He said he was going to check the traps before the storm rolled in. I told him to be quick. He said he always was. He wasn’t. I still replay that tiny exchange, imagining a version where I say something that would convince him to stay home. Or something that makes him let me go with him.

The door stuck and then gave way. Inside, the air held that frozen-dust smell, as though time had exhaled and stayed there. The cot was still in the corner. The stove, the tools, and the little tin that held our matches were all still there. Nothing touched. Nothing moved. As if the place had spent three winters waiting for us to open the door again.

Boss circled once, sat, and stared at the empty chair by the stove—Ryan’s chair. He used to carve little notches in the arm when he was thinking. I counted them once. Thirty-seven notches. When he disappeared, I stopped counting everything.

I walked deeper inside. My boots left careful impressions, like the floor might break if I stepped too hard. A tin mug rested on the shelf, rim chipped. Ryan had dropped it once while teasing me about drinking coffee as if it were a survival skill. There was also the scratch on the far wall—a long diagonal mark he made dragging in firewood one night, insisting he didn’t need help. I didn’t clean it then. I didn’t clean it now. Some marks are meant to stay.

I pulled off my gloves. The air stung my fingers. I ran a hand along the table we built from scrap planks, uneven edges and all. For a moment, I thought I saw something faint—a fingerprint in the dust, a hint of movement, a shift in the light. I blinked. It was gone. Or maybe it had never been there. Grief plays tricks with what the eyes think they know.

Snow drifted past the window, slow and deliberate, like it wasn’t falling so much as returning. Outside, the world was quiet. Inside, it was quieter still.

And somewhere in all that silence, something in me shifted. Not healed. Not finished. Just… moved. Like the land had given me back a piece I didn’t realise I’d dropped.

I sank into Ryan’s chair. Boss curled at my feet, his breathing steady, grounding. I let my hand rest on the carved notches. They were cold at first, then warmed beneath my fingers, as if the wood were remembering too.

I sat there longer than I meant to. I stayed there long enough for the light to change and for the room to feel less like a tomb and more like a witness. Grief didn’t lift, not even a little. But it settled differently, spreading its weight instead of pinning me in one place.

For the first time since Ryan vanished, I felt something that wasn’t an ache. Not hope—I’m not naïve. Just a small, almost imperceptible easing. A loosening of the rope inside my ribs.

Boss sighed. A long, low sound that felt like permission.

I let the quiet come.

I let the snow remind us of both of us.

And for the first time, I let myself remember too.