Moultrie

The snowstorm struck with such fury that the blizzard enveloped the two school-age children until they were no longer visible.

The beginnings of this crisis can be traced to one summer when we purchased a farm in the Northern Midwest and moved from the Pacific Northwest. The farmhouse sturdy, the black earth producing lush gardens and crops.

Our first summer there we worked during the day and on muggy-hot late afternoons, we hauled a rowboat to a nearby lake. The four children, two in early elementary school, one toddler and another preschooler, all tucked in lifejackets as we fished and discovered unique birds like lake loons with their haunting, yodel-like call.

Fall came with a burst of color. Red oak and sugar maple leaves nipped by frost and sun-filled days turned green leaves to fluorescent red, yellow and orange ones. In the Northwest, where we came from, deciduous forest trees were more apt to turn a soggy brown in the drizzly fall rain.

At the farm, even on sunny fall days, the air felt sharp with an urgency to prepare for winter.

Long V’s of migrating Canada geese and ducks flew overhead, their honking heard past dusk.

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

Farmers harvested, plowed, stacked hay bales next to their farmhouses to help insulate the foundation. They took down window screens and hung storm windows. The women canned and preserved garden produce, and I followed suit. Some days our home smelled like a pickle factory. Other days, the kitchen’s aroma reminiscent of a French bakery.

Then cold temperatures hit. As in COLD!

I’d probably never experienced weather colder than 20 degrees above zero. Now we wore layered clothing in the house and traded light jackets for snowmobile suits for the children.

The school bus picked up the two older children at the end of our long driveway, which curved past the barn out to the country lane. No cellphone or computer to track weather.

After each temperature dip down to zero accompanied by a few flurries of snow, the weather warmed within a few days and eaves dripped.

When my husband needed to attend a business meeting in another state, he made arrangements with a neighboring farmer to check on us. The farmer didn’t have a phone, but did check on livestock near our fence. If I needed something, I was to hang a large dishtowel on the backdoor screen, where he would see it and stop in.

Lulled by the weather predictability a few days after my husband left, I bundled the two children up and watched as they headed down the driveway to catch the school bus, the snow flurries a little thicker than usual.

The suddenness of the storm stunned me. One minute the children happily headed down the driveway to school. The next minute, a blinding blizzard struck.

“Come back!” I shouted. The roaring wind wiped away my words. The children disappeared from sight.

The realization struck me — some or all of us could perish.

If I dashed outside to try to catch the children on the driveway before they missed the road and ended up falling down into the small river, I might get lost in the blowing snow and freeze to death, particularly if I didn’t take time to change out of tennis shoes and a light jacket.

And children in the house — a toddler and preschooler. If I didn’t return, what could happen to them? Agonizing seconds. The temperature probably at 40 degrees below zero, not counting the wind chill.

I continued calling to the children, yearning for divine intervention.

Through the blowing snow, two child-size snowmobile suits appeared. The children, struggling against the wind, headed to the warmth of the home.