THE CALM DURING THE STORM

By Paula Hagar

PROMPT—Never will I forget ...

The oil rig where I was working was only 30 miles east of Williston, North Dakota, so I figured an hour was more than enough time to drive the normally night-deserted Highway 2. As I set out, ice crystals danced in the headlights, but I was toasty in the warm hive of my car. It was a spectacularly frigid clear night.

Outside of Williston, the sky was so crystal clear the Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon, so bright I was certain I could touch it. The 30-degree below zero air temps had scoured the night sky clean. It was perfect for seeing the Northern Lights, and leaving early would give me time to stop and try, once again, to photograph the shimmering auroras. In addition to the fact that I was born a night owl and began to wake up at sunset, one of many reasons I always volunteered for the night shift in those days were the rare special nights when the thin curtains of auroras danced and dazzled me into a state of wonder that lives in me still, 45 years later.

But only a few miles up the highway, the small ice crystals began to grow larger, and with each minute the shiny snowflakes grew bigger and thicker, and within minutes a fierce and rowdy wind began to blow the snow in horizontal sheets across the highway. First the middle highway lines disappeared, and then the road itself, and as my speed went from 30 to 20 to 5 to 2 miles per hour, I became hypnotized and snow blind by huge white flakes and clumps of snow flying straight into my headlights and across my windshield. As I veered into a snowdrift on the right, I jerked the wheel, then veered into another snowdrift on the opposite side of the highway, finally just creeping foot by foot down the highway.

Once, a semi came up FAST behind me, blasted his horn, and passed me, and I followed his tail lights for a few miles as his truck’s girth blew the snow aside. But he raced on ahead, much faster than I dared to drive, and the semi was soon out of sight. Once again I was hypnotized and hallucinating, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles and tense body. How could he see and drive on so fast while I was immersed in blinding, blowing white? I stopped the car and got out. The wind roared and howled and whipped snow around like wild dust devils. I looked up and saw a clear black night sky sparkling with countless stars. WTF?

Then I got it: I was caught in one of North Dakota’s infamous ground blizzards. It wasn’t snowing at all, but the intense wind was lifting and whipping snow off the prairie and the tops of the snowbanks, obscuring everything from the ground to 15 feet above. The semi’s windshield was above the ground blizzard, but I, in my small sedan, was right in the middle of the blind spot. Never will I forget those 3 hours it took me to creep the 30 long miles into town when finally, the second scariest experience of my life was over.

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Paula Hagar's passion is driving around the U.S. entirely on back roads while writing about and photographing her adventures. She has kept a journal consistently for over 50 years. Paula writes short non-fiction essays which have been published in several anthologies, including Gifts from Our Grandmothers, Bicycle Love, All the Lives We Ever Lived (Vols. 3, 4, 5 and 6) and Who Am I Today?, as well as the American Western Museum’s annual anthology of ekphrastic writings. Paula writes from Denver, Colorado.