• 08 Nov, 2025 *

He stopped for a single night in the hut. A day after the crash, at the end of an awful journey across a barren landscape. It was half buried in snow, but the low roof and tin chimney were a beacon in the white surroundings. Relief sprang from him and he scrambled through knee-deep drifts. The cold had bitten his hands raw, and he struggled with the handle. He fell through the door and collapsed onto the single bed, shivering until he could feel his fingers. The old cot creaked beneath him, complaining after so long without an occupant. It was only marginally more bearable than the landscape outside, but it was shelter nonetheless. Lying in the dim space, frosted windows shading out the last remaining light, he chastised himself again for his stupidity in setting out in the storm. Desperate to return to Elizabeth, he had ignored all advice the postmaster had given him before he left Aklavik. The man’s words had been ringing in his head since he had pulled himself from the wreckage of his plane. “It’s foolhardy. You’ll get yourself killed.” He was sure when he left that the journey was worth the risk. It had been weeks since he left Fort McMurray. An agonising period without Elizabeth, away from the comforts and priorities of home. Now those priorities paled in comparison to the ones of the new life he had fallen into. Find shelter, find water, find food. Find another person. It was a miracle he hadn’t been killed by the crash. It was a miracle he had found the hut in the remnants of the blizzard. The storm had died down enough for him to move on from his ruined plane, but the wind still shook the building, sending ghosts to taunt him from beyond the thin windows. He sat up and rummaged in his backpack through the few items he had salvaged from the wreckage of his plane. His fingers brushed past the heavy wool socks, a fresh pair, and he thanked God that he would find some comfort in them tomorrow. A small mercy. He found the package he was looking for, and unwrapped the last of the oatcakes Elizabeth had baked. He took small mouthfuls, eking out their sustenance, chewing slowly to savour her provision for him. Even so distant, there was a touch of her in his attempt at survival. Everything else was up to him. He found the peace of mind long enough to pray that the food might keep him going a little longer than it should. When he could muster the strength to move again, he took himself to the stove in the corner. There was some firewood in a box by the hearth, bone dry and dusty. He built a perfect pile on the grate, kindling stacked with space to breathe. He took the matches from his pack and was careful when he struck one. He had nothing more valuable. The fire wouldn’t draw. The chimney was clogged. It sputtered out and filled the room with smoke. Filled his eyes, his lungs, choking him. He tried again, another precious match, and watched the fire die. He carefully rearranged the pile of tinder and a third match was unsuccessful. He slammed the door of the stove, teeth gritted, a rising growl in his throat. He returned, coughing, to the bunk and decided in his defeat that he would leave the hut as soon as he was ready the next morning. He should be thankful to God for bringing him here, but he could muster no thanks, only a longing to move on. That he could show such contempt for the thing he needed most surprised him, but he could not shake his restlessness. It was an instinct that told him he must keep going. An understanding that if he stayed in the hut too long, he would die. So far from any town, he would remain for months without seeing anyone. No one travelled into these parts till the snow had thawed. This close to the arctic circle, there was never a guarantee that it would. If he could find one of the small towns bordering the Mackenzie river, he would be saved. He took the stub of candle from his pack, and used a final match to light it. He was sure the feeble flame of the candle had saved him in the narrow carcass of the plane, but in this larger room it would do no more than provide some light to read by. Better to suffer in darkness later, he decided, than bear the weight of sleeplessness now. He rummaged in his pack for his book of poetry, hoping that the work of Eliot or Yeats might settle his mind enough to find rest.

He had walked for miles before he gave in to the pangs of hunger and sat down on a fallen tree with his head spinning. He packed snow into his empty canteen and placed it inside his jacket to melt. He took a box of biscuits from his pack. Crumbs tumbled into the snow as he ate and he mourned their loss. The food barely soothed the aching in his stomach, even less gave him the energy to keep warm. He was weakening, succumbing to hypothermia, to frostbite. That threat had been enough to start him into walking early. Knowing he would be deathly cold within minutes of setting off, he had chosen to make the most of the light and hoped to find another shelter before the sun set again. His clean socks were already saturated. At the beginning of the day, his feet had stung where blisters were forming. Now they were numb. The cold seeped up his legs, stealing their strength. His back and hips ached from walking on uneven ground, and from driving his feet into the snow. In places it had come up to his waist and he had to scramble through with his hands. It was sluggish work. His body was heavy. His chest tight. His thoughts were muddled. Fraught snatches of awareness of his fragility. He was walking South East, hoping to follow the trajectory of the Mackenzie river. Follow it towards home and one of the settlements he had viewed countless times from above. He should recognise his surroundings, but the landscape was unfamiliar to him. He could see no landmarks to guide him. It took on an abstract form from the ground. He knew the land as a model of tiny pinprick trees and slopes flocked with cotton wool which belonged alongside a toy railway. He stared across the lake, glistening in the sun. There were so many lakes, resting in so many forests. He could not begin to calculate which one he had found. There was not so much as a fishing hut on the frozen surface to identify this lake from any other. There was no sense of distance. Just a vast crystalline waste as far as he could see, inviting him to confront his loneliness. It would be beautiful, were its emptiness not so terrifying. With so much time to ruminate, his fears became louder. If he died out here, he would have fulfilled nothing. He couldn’t think of a single good contribution he had made to the lives which had happened around him. He had always thought of himself as a pioneer, enabling the great expansion West and North by supplying the frontier, but in the barren landscape, his works were made small. There was nothing by which he would be remembered. He sat for a long time, wrestling with his absence of meaning. The desolation of the wilderness overcame him.

He struggled upright, stumbled as he looked to the sky for a bearing, and began walking to the lake. Snow crunched beneath his boots. The breeze cried in his ears. His vision swam. He blinked. When he opened his eyes he had lurched several steps forward. He struggled to keep track of his movement and in a flash he had travelled dozens of paces without realising. Elizabeth whispered to him from the trees. Her voice rose and fell as the branches swayed and creaked. Her scent came to him on the breeze. The warm and heady smell of her body. He grew hot and thought he was soon to wake beside the fireplace at home. The space around him changed, at once vast and empty, and close and claustrophobic. His strides carried him further than they should. His pack became light. His mind, clear. There was a loud crack. The ground beneath him shifted. He pitched forwards, falling into a bright mirror, reflected sun blinding. He was weightless, plunging downwards. Water splashed up around him. The lake - deep, endless - swallowed him whole.

His mind snapped into clarity. The sudden cold drove the wind from him. He was painfully alert and aware of his peril. His silent cry became a puff of steam in the still air. He scrabbled to try and prevent himself from falling deeper, fingers finding no purchase on the ice. It cracked and drifted into the pool, floating in chunks. The water was a black pit. Panic rose, blocking out the pain. His feet dragged through the water, icy and slow. His sodden clothes snared him. The weight of his pack pulled him under. He wrung what remaining strength he could from his legs, trying to free himself from the lake. He found something solid to push against and hauled himself from the water, across the ice, through the snow and onto the bank, where he lay still, panting. He raked in shallow lungfuls. Air passing in and out of him fruitlessly, not enough to recover from his breathlessness. Dread coursed through him, colder than the icy touch of the water on his skin. His head pounded. His stomach churned, not with hunger but realisation. He could not recover from this. The cold would kill him quicker than he could make a fire. He should remove his clothes, but doing so was an impossibility. He could not move. All his remaining strength had created a trench in the snow between the lake and his deathbed. His heart pounded a furious drum beat, marching him with calamitous finality towards his fate. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, burning him from the inside, compelling him to flee even though he could not. He should be facing death bravely, not cowering in its shadow. His will to live was as strong as it ever had been, but his ability to fight was gone. In the days since the crash, death had never been far from his mind. A constant impetus to keep moving. A silent hunter, trailing him across the desolate land. It had finally caught him. It reminded him of everything important: Elizabeth, whom he would never see again; his faith, which was not enough to define a life well-lived. In his final moments, he pre-empted the judgment of his maker and found his actions wanting. It was not these which would define him, but his being. He prayed that the mark of his maker would give his life substance, give it purpose, give it beauty. Then his mind went clear. Freed from the worries of how he had lived. He could sense his organs ceasing their function. His body betraying him, giving up the fight before his mind. Trapping him within a useless shell to wait until the end. He gazed helplessly across the lake, watching the final beams of light drift up over the forest and into the sky, making wonder of the clouds.

He woke in a haze of confusion. It took him several breaths to remember what had happened. As the revelation came to him, he was shocked to learn he was alive. He tried to move under a heavy blanket. He ached from head to toe. Fire, deep in his fibre, close to the bone. As he lifted his head, a shadow detached itself from a dark corner and came to his side. It was a man. Elderly, or so he seemed from his wild beard and ungroomed eyebrows. In his blurry sight, he saw kind eyes and a tight-lipped smile distended by the shadows from the fire light, all bearing pity. “Now, now,” the man said. “Stay still. Don’t hurt yourself.” “Where am I?” he managed to say. “You’re safe.” He trusted the voice. He lay back, overcome with exhaustion and could hold his eyes open no longer.

Next he woke, light streamed into the room, laying bare his panic. The room was sterile and claustrophobic in the pale glow. Shelves and decorations on the walls, barely visible on the edge of his blurred vision. The man was once again at his side within moments. “Who are you?” he heard himself croak. “A friend,” came the reply, and it was enough to usher him back into dreamless sleep.

The fire crackled and projected dancing light beyond his eyelids. He was aware of shuffling in the cabin. Daily rhythms interrupted by his presence and his needs. He was helpless to do anything but lie down, eyes shut, whether asleep or not. His body remained exhausted while his mind started to race. Across an unknowable span of time, the wakefulness turned from brief and languid snatches into longer periods of painful lucidity. He must have been in a bad way when the stranger found him. The man talked to him in soothing tones as he gave him water from a wooden cup, fed him porridge from a wooden spoon. Easy to eat and flavourless. He gulped down mouthfuls from the steady hand. As days counted themselves into weeks, and the sunsets grew later into the day, he was able to sleep more comfortably. He was able to dream again. Concern wound itself into an impenetrable knot in his mind. Familiar experiences were warped by the appearance of unknown people, or by feelings of dread for an event yet to occur. His dreaming mind put him on course for disaster. The stranger began to appear in the dreams, as a patient friend, drawing him away from a brink of collapse. One night he woke in a sweat with a hand on his chest, pressing him firmly onto the bed, a face close to his in the darkness. “Shh.” Hot breath on his cheek. “Just a dream. Just a dream.”

They sat together in the firelight. The first time they had an ordinary conversation. A semblance of mutuality between them. The man’s name was Kent. He had made a simple life for himself, enjoying solitude and peace once the snows fell, and the buzz when the area came alive with prospectors in the summer. He was still in pain, still weak, but no longer in need of constant care. Kent sat in the tall and beaten armchair beside the stove. He sat up on the bed. It was a joy to be lucid, to rest in still wakefulness rather than fretful sleep. They spoke in sporadic bursts as snow billowed into drifts at the bottom of the window panes which were blown off as they grew too large. Their conversation was punctuated by the breath of wind down the chimney pipe. A hollow moan which reminded him that this was no ordinary evening of leisure with an old friend. For all else, it could have been. Kent was a pleasant companion. He could not be sure if he would have chosen his company under less strange circumstances. But as it was, his mood was light and his presence was relaxing. “I was not far from Fort Simpson when the storm hit. Where am I now?” he asked Kent, his mind turning to the priority of getting home. Though his body was not strong enough to leave the hut, let alone travel, he found that thinking of leaving gave him hope for his recovery. “Nearest town is Yellowknife. Other side of the lake.” He was dismayed. He had been dragged miles off course from his flight path along the Mackenzie river. He was hoping to reach one of the towns on the water between Fort McMurray and Aklavik filled with frontier dwellers. There he could speak with another pilot or a postmaster to arrange passage on the next flight. If he was closer to Yellowknife than anywhere else, he was a long way North of where he should be. Getting to Yellowknife was one thing. Getting home was another. It could take weeks or even months of travel. Yellowknife was a new town, rural and unconnected. With so few citizens, flights would be infrequent. His chances of getting home soon were slim. When he expressed his desire to leave as soon as possible, he was met with a knowing smile. “Just as soon as you’re well, and the weather improves.”

He was embarrassed when he woke to see Kent not in the room. He did not remember being taken by slumber as Kent spoke in his deep, sonorous tones. He hoped that Kent had looked on him kindly when he stepped over to wrap the wool blanket tight around him. He rummaged through his bag which was now beside the bed. He had demanded it in a panic on waking with a start. Kent brought it and presented it unceremoniously. Since then, it had been a source of relief when he had been unable to rest. Small reminders of what he was recovering for. Everything was still in it, and the book of familiar poems soothed his troubled mind.

He took to sitting at the window and watching Kent work. All day he mended snares, skinned rabbits, broke firewood and completed the hundred other menial tasks required to live away from civilisation. The lake he had fallen into spread out before him. Kent told him how he had been returning home from a hunt when he had come across his body sprawled in the snow. He strapped him to his sled alongside the deer, so the warmth of his recently killed quarry might save him, and dragged him the several miles home. He could feel no pulse by the time they were at his cabin, and it was a vain hope that he might survive. It was only in the cold of the open air that he came to realise how indebted he was to Kent, what the man had given to save him. The man who was at once stranger and brother. They knew nothing of each other but what they had spoken of and witnessed. Kent in tending to the physical needs of a stranger in dire need. Him in the snatches between sleep of Kent going about his tasks in the hut - stoking the fire, stirring pots of porridge, alerted from reading when he noticed the man in his bed wake - and now in the tasks of survival which seemed so trivial in his hands. As Kent worked, he let out bellowing coughs which steamed into the icy air. He stopped at intervals to get his breath back, seeming more tired than he should. “Let me do that,” he said to Kent from the front door. The old man brought the axe down hard and shattered the log on the splitting block. He looked up to the porch. The steam had condensed and frozen in his beard, turning the grey to shining silver. “You need your rest,” Kent said and hurled the axe into another awaiting log. “I’m well enough to help.” Kent didn’t look up, but lifted his wrist and smeared the sweat across his forehead with his coat sleeve. “I’m fine,” he barked. His shout became a cough which rasped in his throat, echoing off the trees. He was overcome with a fit of coughing until he had to sit down on the splitting block, lowering himself down with the axe handle. He rode out the episode, until he was able to sit in the quiet of the hill and watch the slow movement in the trees around the distant lake.

The fire flickered within the stove. Embers casting a red glow through the sooty glass in the door. They both watched it, entranced by its graceful movement. The sound of crackling logs permeated the room. They talked of their lives, history passing between them without a glance being exchanged. He spoke of Elizabeth and was surprised to feel no pang of worry or guilt at mentioning her. She was like a dream, someone from another life, one which had no place in Kent’s cabin. Kent grew tired and his silences grew longer. He noticed Kent shivering and told him to take the bed. He refused as always, but took the blanket and slept the night in the armchair.

Kent showed him how to drill a hole in the ice. He taught him how to weight a line and sense the vibrations which meant a fish had bitten. Wrapped in layers padded with skins, they crouched together on the ice of the lake with the sun in their eyes. Kent watched him with pride and smiled at him while his clumsy hands did in minutes what Kent’s could do in seconds. When the line moved and he yanked it back above the ice with a fish attached, Kent slapped him on the back and gave a roar of celebration which drained him of his remaining strength. The walk back to the hut was slow, and Kent was unsteady on the ice he had traversed earlier with ease.

He witnessed Kent’s decline in the small things: the way his fingers shook as he unscrewed jar lids; his glazed expression and the bags beneath his eyes after only a few hours of toil; the slump in his posture, the curve of his spine and sloping of his broad shoulders; the rising later, unalerted by the dawn light; the slowing of his step; the chewing on his finger nails; the decision not to wash one morning; the weariness which was deeper than his body and which overwhelmed his soul. The day he knew Kent would not recover was the same day the man conceded and took the bed.

“The snow is thawing. Soon you won’t make it across the lake. If you leave now, you could get to Yellowknife.” Kent’s voice was hoarse as he spoke from the bed. His words were a surprise and caught him off guard whilst preparing meat to cook. “I’ll go when you’re better,” he said. “You should go now. It’s weeks of walking round the shore if the lake melts.”

The snow crunched beneath his feet. He walked in a wide circle down the slope to the lake, and back up to the hut. His feet traced a well trodden path into the drifts. He watched the sun rising over the lake on the way down, and looked to the hut on the way up. His eyes bored through the walls as though trying to see how Kent was. He had woken before dawn, stiff and upright in the armchair. The embers had burned low, so he rekindled the fire to keep the heat lasting through the morning, and set out into the cold so that he wouldn’t wake Kent. The man was dying. He didn’t know how or how much longer he’d last. He found loneliness creeping back to the edge of his psyche. The empty landscape swelled around him as it had after the crash. The absence of another person had ceased to be a worry in the blissful days of his recovery. He was terrified of being flung back into that place. He was well enough to leave their joint refuge as Kent had insisted. If he had a chance of reaching Yellowknife, he had a chance of finding a plane to Fort McMurray, back to Elizabeth. He should return to the life which flitted on the edge of his memory, but couldn’t bring himself to leave Kent. The thought of the man to whom he had become so close dying alone was too much to bear. Even though his other life called to him, he found himself held in place by the needs of another. He knew he should want to leave, but could muster no such desire. He examined the normality which hailed him, and found it lacked substance. He could think of nothing as important as caring for Kent in his dying days. There was nothing he needed from his old life which could not be found in this one. It was not his selfish needs which kept him here, it was those which tried to drag him back. It was for Kent he must stay, bear out the cold and the dark and the loneliness to protect and keep him.

He returned from collecting firewood to find that Kent had vomited down the side of the bed and onto the floor. The man barely had the strength to lift his face from the pool. The split logs clattered to the floor as he rushed to Kent’s bedside. He placed his hand against the man’s forehead to find it burning hot. Kent was delirious, but allowed himself to be rolled away from the vomit. It was thick and yellow and streaked with red. He fetched a rag soaked with cold water and laid it on Kent’s head before setting about the messy business of scraping the liquid off the bed, mopping it off the floor and into a spare pan. He took the pan and washed it outside. When he returned, he remembered the porridge which had been simmering on the stove. It had burned to the bottom of the pan. He threw the wooden spoon into the pot in anger and the porridge splattered up the wall behind the stove. He closed his eyes and sighed before collapsing into the armchair to watch Kent as he drifted back into sleep.

He was woken by the morning light painting patterns in the frost on the windows. He heard no sounds. No rasping breath to which he had become accustomed. He moved quickly to Kent’s bedside and found his breathing shallow, barely lifting his chest under the blanket. He scrambled for some water, then gently shook Kent awake, offering the cup to his lips as Kent had done for him. Kent accepted the drink and returned to sleep till the sun was high and the fire burned low for lack of fuel. He did not wish to risk the journey to the woodpile, should Kent need him while he was gone.

Days passed as he kept his steady vigil, all the while muttering prayers on Kent’s behalf. He longed for Kent’s wisdom. His calm presence would be enough to steer them both through this trouble. He did not begrudge the sleepless nights, upright in the armchair in the light of the fire. He knew Kent had not begrudged them either.

He sat at Kent’s bedside and listened to his breathing slow, and then cease. He sat in the silence, letting it wash over him. It was not the grief which overcame him, but the loneliness. The fact that he was again without companion. He kept his head bowed. His hands, palm-down, pressed grooves into the blanket by Kent’s body. He remained there until he could bear the silence no longer and strode outside, taking the shovel as he stepped off the porch.

He buried Kent’s body on the knoll above the hut, where the vista of the lake opened up and the view was sweetest. The ground was hard, frozen. The grave was shallow. He struggled with the weight as he lowered him in. He set a headstone of branches at the tip of the mound, a carving on its face of an eagle or a plane. When the work was done, he sat beside his friend’s resting place and looked out over the land. He breathed deeply, thinking of how they had surveyed it together. While Kent toiled and he rested, the banks and their trees were the backdrop of the forging of their bond. For the first time since the crash, he put his head into his hands and sobbed. All worry for the future, all concern for his well being, all thoughts of his wife were wrung out of him. He marvelled at what Kent had done for him. Of the honour of easing his pain in return. Of his gratitude for their brief friendship. All thought of meaning was gone. All fear of fulfilling his life’s purpose melted with the snow. All that remained was the solace of having been known.