Dreams of Snow

I dreamed of snow all summer long.

Great swathes of it, snowflakes so puffy and big, collecting on the ground in mounds swiftly turning to mountains, drifting down from the clouds like feathers. The kind of snowflakes you can catch on your tongue that feel like icy frosting, melting in your mouth.

All through those hot, sweltering days when the humidity clings to your skin, sucking the energy from your very soul, I would let my head drop to my pillow, and my eyes glaze over, and I would feel the cold, quick breeze against my face.

Today is the first day of winter, and yet, still, no snow. The temperature stays solidly, wretchedly, above 60 degrees, no matter how I hope for a cold front.

But it’s not like that where you live, is it? They say it can snow all year round there, even in the summer. Even in May or June, when we used to walk three miles to get dilly bars from the ice cream shop with all of the skim change we could muster, it is not like that in Alaska. There, the higher you climb, the colder it gets. Where you are, it gets very cold.

You texted me from a 7,000-foot mountain, remember? You sent me a picture of a peak, snow shoes on your feet, in just the bottom corner of the image.

How’s Austin?

I always knew you were a sadist.

You told me you laughed aloud when you received that message.

It was one of the Arrigetch peaks; I don’t remember which one. They say it means fingers of the outstretched hand. Those jagged mountains are a landmark to the native Nunamiut people and were carved by glaciers, icy indomitable monsters, long ago.

How is it, up there, in the land of icy giants? Are you finding yourself?

I know how you hate it when people ask that. It’s a cliche to go adventuring to find your weakness. Your flaws. Your journey of self-love, the visage of your shadow side. “I’m tired,” you said. “I need something new, something different.”

Don’t we all?

It’s beautiful there, that’s true. Every day, I see you post more pictures. So grand, so picturesque. Chilling, icy, frosty, a place out of time. A place that will always remind me of November, sticky summers, and the hike we did together. You let me borrow your hiking poles; your spare pair of gloves. Mine had always been good enough for Texas, but you laughed when I pulled them out, and I felt as if you’d pushed me.

“Those are fine for the south, but up here, you can use mine.”

You laughed at me. Sure, you had laughed at me many times before, but it hadn’t ever felt like this.

I humored you, I followed you, I hiked with you. We did what you wanted to do and went where you wanted to go. For me, at first, it was enough just to be with you. I’d finished my finals and run the gauntlet of papers and crises as a first-time, first-generation master’s student. I was exhausted, and I was alone. At least, it felt that way, because I was without you. Even there at the Gates of the Arctic with my best friend by my side, I was alone again.

“I’m not sure,” you said, “I can go back.”

What did you mean? I wish I had asked. If it was money, I could have bought you a plane ticket. If it was an apartment, I could have given you a bed to sleep in. If it was your parents, they would never have to know. You could have spent every last holiday with me.

I sat there, on that rock, numb. My fingers tingling in the frigid air. I was only thinking of how you were speaking. Of how certainty finds its bearings in your mind. If you say you’re “not sure,” then you already know. Funny, how your brain works like that. Some might call it secretive. Some might call it calculating.

“What will you do, then?” I asked you. My tongue felt too big, swollen in my mouth. “Whatever happened to future historians?”

“I want to live, not to write about other people’s lives.”

“Off to make history, you mean?”

“I don’t need to end up in the books. I just know - this isn’t just a break. I feel like I’m living for the very first time.”

You shrugged, as if it were obvious. As if we had not discussed academic careers for hours together in high school. I remember one Saturday we spent at the library with a stack of books on the table. We passed them back and forth, reading synopses, the table of contents, the first line, and finally the last. We judged them like passing cars on the street, dismantling and reshaping their arguments like clay.

“Aren’t you curious?” You pushed. “What will you do when you’re finished with your Master’s degree?”

“I’ll write,” I told you, and I still cannot believe that you did not think it was enough. What was there to be curious about? How could I be curious about the dreams we’ve shared since high school? What will I do? I’ll archive and research and redesign the entire canon of literature, then the entire organization and kingdom of Western history. I would dismantle the Amerian Empire, one paragraph at a time, and I would cut down the old establishment in a single sentence in the New York Times. Like we said we would do together.

You sighed.

I wondered where I’d missed the signs. Precisely when our dream became mine, and you woke up, without ever thinking to tell me. I knew you were tired. I knew you needed a change. But you always said you’d come back. Always said you could never imagine doing anything else in your life. You told me once that higher education had you by the throat and you just needed a breath before returning to it.

Then, with my eyes on the hazy horizon, and the cold sinking into my bones, you were telling me about the jobs you were considering up here. A ski resort and supporting roles in oil fields.

My ears must have been as red as my face by then.

I guess I lied to myself. I guess I thought we’d do it all together. Sleepovers, playgrounds, cross country, first drinks, first kisses, first everything. I guess I thought we’d be like those girls you hear about who grow up together. The ones who have each other’s backs against parents and principles, bullies and bad bosses. The girls who get married at similar times and then move in down the street from each other, all in time to raise their kids together. But that doesn’t happen anymore, if it ever did.

Who’s cliche now, Maddie?

I guess, more simply, I was wrong.

I left you standing there on the runway, arms bundled in a wool sweater and an overcoat, wrapped around your chest, breath visible as cotton in the air.

You told me to call, and I didn’t know the right words.

I think I nodded. Could you read it on my face then? The rage? Or maybe all you saw was someone to pity. Someone who’s never truly left Texas. Never left her family or convention. Never felt free.

That’s what you said: the cold frees you. And only then, I think, I saw I haven’t been longing for the snow so much as an autumn breeze or the smell of flowers, freshly cut. The cold doesn’t set me free, Maddie. It traps me.

I think you’ve known that for a while, though. I think you knew what this was when you invited me up to visit you. I should have known when you didn’t reply to all of my invitations to visit me, in the city you were born in, that you did not intend to come back. You knew what this would do to me; you didn’t want to do it from afar. You wanted me to see the snow and feel the ice breaking between us.

I’m sure we’ll talk. I’m sure we’ll text and call, but I know, too, that this is it. This is an end. It feels heavy as a lock turning in a door. You’ve turned it, and you’ve asked me not to knock. Finality is blue and silent. I wrote this to you, but I know I won’t send it. I don’t think you’d understand.

Last night, I did not dream of snow.