Winter Rescue

Dear Journal,

I'm so glad to be safe and warm inside again. But probably not half as glad as those poor tourists I had to rescue! They'd taken a snowskiff up into the mountains to watch for shooting stars. (I know they're meteors and meteorites, but I still think the old-fashioned name is so poetic, you know?) Right? We had that winter storm advisory so I'm completely at a loss for who rented or loaned one out to them. Maybe they brought it themselves?

I think things would have turned out fine if it wasn't for that fireball. Well, okay, fine, The Meteorite. Up in the foothills here, I was close enough to hear the deafening CRACK as it exploded in Owai's atmosphere. The shock wave? It. Cracked. My. Windows. It shook my mugs off their shelves! I raring and ready broadcast what had happened to me, but the volunteer emergency dispatch channel was so overwhelmed with people trying to share, post, and ask questions that it wasn't worth it. I’d only seen the flash of light out of the corner of my eye from my cabin windows, so I wasn't sure about the direction of the meteorite (I didn't even know if it was a meteorite or a meteor at that point), just that it was close.

And so, logging off and heading into the kitchen to sweep up my broken mug shards: that's when I saw our friend: Little Blinking Danger Light. So I shoved the ceramic shards and dust pan aside (yes, I know. I shouldn't have left something sharp on the floor. But: the life threatening emergency was *outside* Not in my kitchen!) So I:

• bundled up for the dark and the cold and the windchill
• left my message on the first responder channel that X-133 was going out after distress beacon call #12312022
• doublechecked that I had my kit and backup supplies in my snowmobile's cargo compartment

That wind was brutal. Just to get a sense of what we were dealing with, I made the mistake of going outside before I put my helmet & gloves on. Even with my fur, the gusts were knives of ice, slicing into exposed skin. It made me really worried for the people I was looking for: it was obviously cold enough to give most bareskinned Alizurians frostbite within minutes of exposure.

So I kept broadcasting as I traveled. I had it play my recorded preset:  "First Responder X-133 here, I picked up your distress beacon and I'm heading towards your location now. What can you tell me about your situation? Have you also called for medevac?"

Inside my helmet, under my breath, I was repeating something else.

"Please don't be an avalanche, please don't be an avalanche....."

The last heavy snow was recent. We haven’t had weather cold enough or wet enough to freeze the snowpack solid. It wasn't likely, but with that shockwave? I didn't know. And they weren't responding. Could have been equipment failure. Could have been something worse.

As I navigated closer, most of my worst fears were relieved: the tree branches were bare and bent or snapped as if from a sudden wind. There was an obvious layer of clumpy snow blown off and disturbed from its previous location. I topped J'Havel Ridge and looked down into the valley, and there was a gigantic column of steam rising up from the earth. Out of a crater. I could hear the hissing of snow boiling away into steam through my helmet, and the occasional -pop- of the cooling planetary fragments shattering into glassy shards as they rapidly cooled.

I hadn't been planning to go out looking for wish shards...but here it seems they'd come to me.

When I got close to the crater's edge I had to park my 'mobile: most of the snow had been blown out of it. I turned its flashing lights on so I could find it again, grabbed my emergency kit from the back, and climbed down it. The ground crunched under my feet: the soil was alternately frozen or scorched glassy from heat. I had to navigate around a few molten-hot fragments. The ground was still steaming. But my radar was absolutely clear that the beacon--and hopefully the people--I was looking for were inside the crater. At least we were sheltered from the wind down in the bowl. But the steam, and the uncertain terrain, made it careful footing.

Now that i'm back home I can think about how beautiful it was, in a dangerous, stark, alien kind of way. But that was the last thing on my mind at the time.

I found the happy couple huddled together for warmth under three foil rescue blankets, inside an unpowered emergency pop-up shelter. They said that when the meteorite hit, suddenly their vehicle shorted out or went haywire--Maybe an EM pulse?--I'm no scientist, I'll ask a friend--and everything electronics they had shut down. After their snowskiff suddenly shut down, they skidded and slid and fell into the impact crater. They dug out the emergency kit, activated the beacon, and prayed. I'm so glad they package those distress beacons in a shielded housing for just this kind of occasion.

One of them--Kamsya had a nasty sprain or broken ankle from the falling snowskiff and he didn't feel safe moving. On the other hand, I hadn't been ground zero for a freak EMP and had a working emergency kit: so I set up my powered pop-up shelter ASAP and broadcast our updated coordinates and location: we would shelter in place until the winds had subsided and a shuttle could airlift Kamsya and Bastian off the mountain.

It was unexpectedly cozy: three people in a little snow tent with the orange glow of a heater and my supplies. I confess: I was 100% excited to have the chance to break out the extra goodies in my rescue kit: the powdered instant spiced sweetsap and broth, the dried fruits and crackers, the nuts and chocolate mix. To keep their spirits up and distract from the pain, we swapped stories and Bastian taught me the lyrics for a Longest song from where he grew up. We stayed up for most of the entire night, until the medvac shuttle was able to arrive right around dawn.

And now that I write this down, I'm laughing: could we have possibly had a more traditional Longest Night? I don't think I can possibly imagine it! I can hardly believe I stayed up to finish writing this all down. Journal, I'm going to observe my second-favorite Longest Night tradition and sleep in 'till noon.

Until next time!