I was about ready to get off the mountain. In fact, I was dreaming about what flavor of Cook-Out milkshake I was going to get when I noticed the ice on the ground. I can’t say I was surprised — I’d had to pull my dog, Friday, into the sleeping bag next to me in the night because she was shivering so hard.
We’d stayed at Overmountain Shelter, a two-story barn built during the Revolutionary War that has since been converted into an Appalachian Trail shelter. My fellow hikers and I woke to full light — if not full sun — glowing between the slats of the unsealed wall. When we stepped down the ladder’s last rung and hit the dirt below, we found the mountains gone, eaten up by a gray mist that had swallowed the whole of the sky. It had been foggy and raining the whole previous day, and the sunless morning meant another day hiking through cold mud.
Hours later it was still cool. The game of sweaty chicken lasted longer than usual, and even when the first person broke, too hot to go on marching without shedding a layer of insulation, the rest of us were reluctant to doff more than the minimum.
My friend Alexander was the first to spot ice, asking me if I was ready to eat crow for declaring the day before that snow in October was impossible. I refused to admit defeat. One ice cube isn’t the same as snow.
Then the wind blew. The trees above rattled together like glass test tubes, and sheaths of ice broke free. They clattered over our heads, some still holding twigs imprisoned at their core.
Friday danced over the shards, whacking into tree trunks with the orange saddlebags that served as her pack.
The forest canopy was frozen, every leaf encased in crystal, white bones against a blue sky. By now, ice crunched underfoot, and frozen flowers shook stiffly in the breeze. A tuft of pine needles snapped like glass in my fingers. It squeaked between my teeth but tasted like Christmas.
