Young and Old in the Mountains

The snow has come and the biting cold.  After the boys left for school this morning, I climbed back into folds of soft flannel, gray as the day, and opened M.F.K Fisher's The Art of Eating to a random chapter which is the way I have taken to reading this substantial book of beautiful stories, beautiful language, its heft too much to tackle from front to back.
Sea Change, 1926.
Wait just a minute while I warm my coffee.
We were in the mountains last week.  I was so anxious to leave town, to be out of our house and the routine of February's days.  We went back to soak our tired muscles and aching bones in hot spring water.  We went to the top of the mountain and turned our faces sideways to come the long way down again and again.  On the first day of riding, I tired enough so that I parted ways with my company, weary and yet grateful to be high up and alone in the natural world.  I chose to get down by way of a long road, loose with turns, tight with trees.  At first I mistrusted myself, alone on the path, not even a bird; so smug in the righteous state of domesticity I have become.
Having recently seen the movie Wild and rereading Cheryl's book after seeing the movie, a line of hers came to me in the moment -but I didn't want to be that hiker.  I wanted to be the hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.  I took a deep breath and pointed my snowboard downhill, stopping here and there on my way down to make sure I was still on my path.  In the quiet solace of snow forest, and still, not a bird.
We walked into our house after four nights and five days in the mountains to a piercing howling.  I thought my eyes and ears were fooling me.  I watched as Eric picked Woody up from her side, her eyes wild with shock, her body freezing cold.  This isn't happening.  This cannot be happening.
not woody, not woody, not woody. screaming those words to myself as i drove. mom, is woody going to die? mom, is woody going to die? it's okay mom. so i see you're crying. mom, i've never seen you cry like this. i'm scared. bring her back here i'll stay with the boys. mama, come back here, she's going, i'll stay with the kids.
She purred twice, I know.  Oxygen mask over her face.  Gone.  We wrapped her in a blanket and took her to the boys.  I broke.
Just shy of seventeen years, my A+ snuggling and reading companion.  She came to me from a pile of wood, cold mornings, and golden Montana sun.  She was the most luminous soul I've ever known.
We are shattered.  We were not here.
And once again the now, gray as the day, reading and writing in the quiet.  The void is palpable and full of pain.  But what I know is this.  In the haze of sadness, guilt, and questions unanswered, we breathe.  And then we breathe again.
I was entering.  I was leaving.  California streamed behind me like a long silk veil.  I didn't feel like a big fat idiot anymore.  And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.  I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.
February, you will not swallow me whole.