Short Story - 'Two Moons Ago' authored by Matt Blackwell

'TWO MOONS AGO'

a short story by Matthew Blackwell

PROLOGUE

My first overseas adventure had begun in October 2012, a year after my first job out of University. Traveling overseas was something I'd reserved for after completing my studies, and when I'd saved a reasonable amount of money, I'd decided that now was a better time than any to set off overseas. This was the beginning of and still is a period of flux that has continued five years down the track to where I am recounting this story while passing through Perth, on my 2017 trip around Australia.
I had left New Zealand to spend the winter in Canada, working at a ski hill in the mountain town of Jasper, Alberta. I enthusiastically took up the job of snow-maker that the hill offered me, which had me working irregular day and night shift schedules dependent on when the weather was best suited to making the artificial snow. As a result, the friends that I had made outside my work crew were equally as irregular and weren't part of any single friend group. This meant that my nights out were never generally with the same crew, but spent with whoever was out partying when I wasn't snow-making.
One night during mid December I was at a pub called the Whistle Stop playing pool and drinking beer with a group of French Canadian girls that worked at the hill. We were joined by their friend who introduced himself as Alex, a French Canadian that was staying in town but not working. I recalled seeing him around before, and was sure we'd previously shared a late night joint outside the back of one of the bars in town. I'd never seen him up at the ski hill though, and I thought that Jasper was a strange place to be in winter if you weren't involved somehow in skiing or snowboarding.
We were chatting around a game of pool, and some small talk developed into a storytelling session where Alex rattled off to me about a trip that he had made to a frozen lake the previous afternoon. After smoking some weed he'd ventured out on his own into the Jasper National Park. Upon finding a frozen lake he'd decided that in the middle of this lake on the ice sheet that he would build a quinzhee, which he would explain to me was essentially an igloo, but made out of compacted snow rather than ice.
The following is a recount of my brief friendship with Alex, a French Canadian drifter who introduced me to his world of reckless autonomy, misadventure and the pursuit of seemingly meaningless goals in the spirit of adventure.

CHAPTER ONE - ALEX THE DRIFTER

"What's a quinzhee?" I ask with a confused but intrigued tone. I'd never heard of such a thing.
"A quinzhee is just like an igloo, but instead of using blocks of ice it's made from a pile of snow that is compacted and then dugout from the side", explained Alex in his thick Quebec accent. He continued to explain that at some point late in the afternoon the light had started to fade and he decided to leave the quinzhee half finished. Upon returning home he'd lost the trail in a small blizzard, but eventually managed to exit the forest on the edge of town and navigate his way back home through the streets.
"Do you want to join me to finish the quinzhee?" Alex asks, "We'll have to first find my footprints in the snow so that we can find the way back to the lake".
Slightly apprehensive but sensing an opportunity for adventure I respond without much convincing. "Definately, I'm not working the next few days, why don't we go tomorrow. I'll bring some whiskey if you bring something to smoke", I quip with an enthusiastic grin. We settle on a basic plan to meet at his place the following day around midday. Alex would bring something to smoke, and I would bring some whiskey.
The conversation moves on and after a couple more games of pool I call an early night and leave the bar to make the 15 minute hike home along the snow covered streets. I'm left feeling a naive sense of excitement and trepidation for the next day's adventure. The idea to build an igloo on a frozen lake seems bizarre but exciting, and it consumes my mind for the entire 15 minute walk home. I brief thought passes that perhaps the fact that Alex was stoned may explain his inspiration to set about building a quinzhee on a frozen lake. I would find out the next day that being high was an integral part of Alex's plan to build this quinzhee.

CHAPTER TWO - HIGH UP IN THE TREES

It was just after 12 as I arrived at Alex's place. He lived in the North end of town on a quiet suburban street that fringed the national park forest. His house was on the forested side of the road and like most of the family homes on this street it was clad with local timber and like others on the forested side it was built three stories high up into the hill. I knock at the timber door and Alex greets me with a lazy smile, his eyes half closed as he adjusts to the bright daylight that reflects from the fresh snowfall of the previous night.
"Did you bring the Whiskey?" He asks with a welcoming laugh and a firm handshake.
"Yes, I've got some Jamesons, its only half full but should do the trick! When do we set off?" I reply, eager to start this adventure into the national park.
"We will first eat some food, and then we will try to find my footprints" he responds with confidence in his voice. "When we have found my footprints we will know the way back to the lake".
Content with Alex's basic plan I follow him up the stairs to the second floor of the house. There's a guitar lying against the couch so I decide to make some noise while Alex goes about cooking up a late breakfast.
"What's on the breakfast menu bro?", I voice from the lounge.
"Noodles!" is Alex's response and after ten minutes or so, Alex arrives in the lounge carrying a couple of soup bowls and a pre-rolled joint. "Breakfast is served!" he proclaims, seemingly proud of his culinary skills. He lights up the joint that gets finished off, then we hastily consume our pre adventure snack. Noodles are not my usual food of choice, but in my slightly blazed and hungry state I'm quite content to finish off the plate.
With my stomach full and my body relaxed by the smoke, we decide to gear up to head into the cold. I've brought with me my snowmaking jacket and pants, some thick shelled Helly Hanson outerwear given to me by the ski hill. With my snow gloves and snowboarding boots on I'm weighed down by the thick winter gear, hoping that it's not going to be too warm on our hike. Alex grabs two driveway snow shovels and passes one to me. "Dont forget the bottle of whiskey!" he reminds me as I kick some gravel from my boots. I decide that my backpack is required, and we set off up the trail alongside his property into the forest.
The trail in front of us is walled with a dense mix of dark greens, earthy browns, and blues. Fur, spruce and pine trees typically make up this area of the Canadian Rockies, with not much room for anything else to compete. Together these trees create a tricolor on the hills around us, which contrasts heavily with the platinum white snow that covers the undergrowth.
We stroll a hundred meters up into the forest and Alex stops. I point my eyes in the direction of his gaze. I can see that the trail continues off to the left, but in front of us is a near vertical cliff blanketed in snow. "We have to go up there" says Alex, with the staunch confidence of the tall fur trees that surround us. I've already decided to trust Alex. He's still a relative stranger to me, but I've decide to go against my typical risk averse instincts and to follow his lead. Besides, my thoughts are that this is his adventure and I'm simply along for the ride.
Alex begins to climb. I watch him from below for a minute or two before I begin my climb, ensuring that I'm to the side of him in the highly possible case of him slipping or dislodging a rock. I realise that I couldn't have worn a worse type of footwear. The snowboard boots I have on are bulky and the soles are like ice skates on the snow covered rock. My feet slide in them a few times, but the climb is easier than I expected. I find that I can make use of the roots of the trees that have decided to perch themselves perilously on the edge of the rocky wall. They make for solid handholds and within five minutes I join Alex at the top of the cliff.
With a small sense of accomplishment, I let Alex lead the way into the into the forest keeping an eye on the snow in case we see his footprints. We're make our own way trail through the forest, crossing fallen trees and stepping around the large piles of snow covered pine cones collected up by squirrels in preparation for the cold winter. "I'm sure it's this way" Alex reassures me.
"I'm not so sure but I'll just follow you", I think to myself. I realise how small our chances are of finding his elusive footprints in the snow, as the snow covered branches remind me of the fresh layer of snow that had blanketed the streets in town over night. Surely the footprints would have been filled in with snow overnight.
"Lets climb this tree and see if we can get a view from the top" Alex muses.
I look to my right and he's pointing to a tall pine tree that stands high above the surrounding forest. Looking upward it's obvious that someone has had an attempt at building a tree hut at the top. Alex goes first and I follow, snapping a few small branches on the way up. After fifteen meters or so I reach the makeshift platform nailed together from sheets of half rotten ply wood. Alex is already sitting on the end readily awaiting my arrival. He looks at me and asks, "let's have some of that whiskey hey!".
"Maybe we'll see your footprints from here" I comment struggling to convince myself. I remove my snow soaked gloves and open the whiskey bottle, passing it to Alex for the first swig. We polish off a half of the remainder between us. The warmth of the alcohol adds to the heat that my body has been exerting after the last thirty minutes of hiking and climbing. We sit there for a while studying the deep snow of the ground below, in search of any footprints.
"I don't see the footprints, and I can't remember where I came out of the forest" resigns Alex.
"Yeah, I figured it'd be a long shot bro, that's all good though. Surely we can get to the lake another way" I suggest.
"there's a trail to the lake, but it is not a direct path, so it'll take longer but it will get us there".
We clamber down from the top of the tree in our now partially intoxicated state, careful not to slip on the snow covered branches. Unsure exactly where we are relative to his house, we head roughly in the direction we came from to reach the town.
Not long into the walk we arrive at another large tree similar to the last in height but this time with a rope swing hanging from one of the larger horizontal branches above. According to Alex, this swing is something we can't leave out of our misadventure into the forest, and we're obliged to stop and have a go. He collects the rope and walks it up the hill well past the trunk. Looking at the small piece of timber that has been tied to the bottom of the rope, and then out toward the slope below he throws himself on, swooping down in a way that mimics one of the aggressive crows that prey on the unsuspecting visitors in town. When he passes the tree trunk he reaches the lowest point in the swing and begins to rise, maybe six or seven meters above the ground below. It looks terrifying, but in our stupified state we're both acting with a bit of irrational courage. Next is my turn, and I walk up the hill and follow his lead. The rope squeeks as it takes my weight, and swoops me down and up into the air. Rising up I can see the town not far ahead, and when my feet are back on solid ground I'm thankful for the liquid courage that the whisky has provided.
With the direction of town clear in front of us we exit the forest onto Alex's street. After a kilometer or so we arrive back at the house and head inside to have a rest and reassess our plan. It's about mid afternoon and the winter sun is starting to drop out of the gray windswept sky. Winter solstice is just a few days out and being this far North of the equator there aren't many hours of daylight.
Disillusioned by our inability to locate Alex's footprints, or rather our poor decision making, Alex produces another joint, which disappears with a few long drags. Another round of noodles is concocted and consumed without complaint as we watch from the lounge windows the rest of the daylight slowly recede towards the mountains on the horizon.

CHAPTER THREE - WALKING ON THIN ICE

"I think we still should go out to the lake, even though it will be dark. The full moon will give us enough light" rouses Alex, surprising me with his new plan. This wasn't quite what I expected to happen and sounded like a crazy idea. I ponder his sanity for a moment, but consider my idea to trust in his wild plans. This isn't something I'd ever think to do on my own, and reconsider that in the spirit of this misadventure that had already occured that afternoon, heading out to the lake during dark would only be in keeping with the day's series of random events. "I guess at the least, it will make an interesting story", I think to myself, reassuring my ego.
Back in our snow drenched outerwear, with snow shovels in hand we set off back up the trail to the side of the house. This time we pass by the cliff that we had earlier ascended. Its dark shadows appearing within the rocky crevaces and making it appear more ominous in the moonlight than it had during the day. As we continue on down the trail to the left, with myself in front I'm starting to think Alex is a bit insane, and an unfamiliar sense of paranoia sets in. I'm walking out into the forest, in the dark with a crazed stranger in tow who's carrying a shovel. I know at the time that it's likely just a result of the weed high that I'd been riding all afternoon, but I can't escape the idea that this relative stranger could be done with me in one clean knock to the head with his shovel. The irrational idea plays on my mind so I stop to speak to him, let him continue past so that he leads the way.
The forest opens into a clearing and we stop to take a break. The sky above us is clear, with the light of the stars starting to dominate the darkness. As I look to the west, the sun has set and the sky is lit up in deep reds and purples, shining through heavy storm clouds on the horizon. "Look at that, the sky out here is something else hey!?", I voice, taken by the beauty of the mountains on twilight. A moment passes as Alex appears deep in thought, staring up to the sky.
"Here comes the night" Alex responds, with a philisophical delivery. I pause to consider his statement and it's perspective. I would only ever consider a sunset to be the end of the day or a loss of light. But, in Alex's mind he saw the opposite. To me this kind of opposite perspective exemplified his personaility, and aligned to his kind of drifter character that appeared to be lonely cruising about this world.
Leaving the clearing behind, I walk in tail and within fifteen minutes we round a bend that opens to a large expanse of flat white snow trailing off into the distance. To the right I can see the clear silhouette of Pyramid Mountain rising up from the lake in front of us. Its striking presence commanding a sense that Alex and I, are insignificant in this grand scheme of nature. Bathed in the white light of the full moon, everything around us is lit up in a bright platinum. The crisp shadows of the trees at the edge of the lake providing the only darkness to the forest floor.
As we approach the lake Alex stops and stares down to his left. I can hear the sounds of water trickling between rocks. "We should drink the water from the lake first" he spurs and turns to follow the sound of the stream. As I reach Alex at the water's edge he has pulled a breakfast bowl from his backpack. Confused, I look at him... "What is that for?"
"To drink the water!" he responds matter of factly. After taking the first sip he passes me the bowl. The water feels needles as it hits my throat, and instantly gives me an ice headache. I ponder on the idea that this is some sort of ritual Alex is making me complete to have a deeper connection to the frozen lake that we're about to step out onto. Some sort of supersticious act to give us safety or something.
Looking out onto the lake, about one hundred meters from the edge there is a visible mound of snow, with a shallow foot trail leading to it from the lake edge. Alex is already half way out as I step onto the ice for the first time. There's about a half foot of snow blanketing the surface and my feet press through to the hard crust to the ice sheet below. When I reach the snow mound Alex is already on top of his previous built snow pile. He's brought with him a pair of snow shoes and is wearing them to compact the fresh layer of new snow that has fallen on the quinzhee pile.
"See the circle of snow I've cleared last time. That's what we need to do. Push the snow onto the mound from the surrounds and then I'll compact it from the top."
"Sweet as, looks simple enough" I respond, still surpised that this thing is actually real. I begin to push the soft snow towards the mound and with Alex compacting on top, it grows from about a foot tall and three meters round to one meter tall.
Stopping for a moment I notice how silent it is out on the lake at night. There's no wind, and any noise made by the stream has been dampened by the snow pack between it and us. We haven't even brought head torches with us, and the reflected moonlight off the snow lights up our entire surroundings like daylight. It's a surreal place to be, out on a frozen lake in the darkness of the northern sky, and the scene sort of puts me into a trance.
"Crack...Crack.....CRACK!!!"
Suddenly I'm snapped awake from my meditative state. The weight of the snow pile with Alex on it is cracking the ice beneath us. We both look at each other concerned and I feel a hit of adrenalin creeping in. Alex carefully steps down from the pile and then makes a clumsy dash towards the edge of the lake in his snow shoes. He stops and turns, and we both look back at the bare ice from which we've cleared the snow. Two seamless cracks have appeared from under my feet, and point straight for the middle of the snow mound.
"What do we do now?" I ask, staring at the cracks in front of us.
"I don't think we should go back over there" responds Alex with his face contorted with a concerned look.
"No, definately not man, that ice is thinner than I thought!". I'm relieved that Alex has enough sense in him to see the danger in being one hundred meters out on a frozen lake that has just cracked under us. There haven't been any more noises since Alex moved off the mound, so we ponder on whether we could get away with continuing to build it. It's a short thought, but we decide that it's best to leave the idea at the lake.
With our backpacks on and the snow shovels in hand we begin slow trudge back along the trail. I turn back to look at the half finished quinzhee, and then up at Pyramid Mountain and feel like an idiot. It's as if the mountain, standing there in all its wisdom knew that we were fools for being out there on that thin sheet of ice.
Arriving back at the edge of town we part ways. We had discussed on the walk back that we could go back to the lake after the ice had frozen thicker, and finish the quinzhee. By the next full moon it would have been about a month and the ice should have refrozen thicker, and we'd also be back out there under the moonlight.

CHAPTER FOUR - MATES

Almost a month had passed, and I'd mentioned to a new friend about the trip Alex and I had made to the lake to build the quinzhee. It sounded much sketchier than I recalled it being when I mentioned how the ice had cracked under us, but this had stirred a bit of interest in this friend of mine, so I decided to invite him along to help us.
Aidan was a New Zealander as well, and we'd become friends through the fact that we'd shared the same course of study, from the same University back home, albeit graduating two years apart. I had only met Aidan in Canada, but he seemed like an adventurous sort so I was comfortable having him along for the next trip to the lake.
I got in contact with Alex to ask him if that was all good. He was also planning to bring a mate to help us with the quinzhee. His friend was called Mohammed, who I knew as a car parking staff member from the ski hill. Mohammed was, I guessed Somalian Canadian, and in his ethnicity was a definite minority in the town. There had been a rumour going around that he was the culprit of some snowsports equipment that went missing at the ski hill, but I suspected that he had been made the scapegoat due to the colour of his skin. When we all met up on the next full moon at Alex's place he seemed on first meeting to be a good guy. I think you can usually get a good sense for the qualities of a person in the first moment of meeting them. Mohammed had a positive and friendly vibe so I was comfortable having him join us.
In tradition with the previous expeditiion to the lake, Alex presented a joint prior to our departure. We smoked it and again I felt the pangs of paranoia seep into the fringe of my conscience. It must have been the dread of the small possibility that we would again have the ice crack underneath us. "At least we've got a few people in case it goes" I had thought selfishly to myself as we made our way along the trail out to the lake. Again, it was a clear night sky and the North star was shining bright, leading us onwards to reach the lake. I laughed to myself as I pictured us as a group of ancient explorers albeit amateur and unprepared, recklessly discovering the land for the first time.
"I can see it", said Aidan, staring at the lake as it opened out in front of us from the dense forest trail.
"That's the one, it doesn't look like much, but when the ice cracks under you that's enough to shit your pants" Alex quips followed by a short smile and some tempered laughter. Like the previous time, the quinzhee was clearly visible out on the lake, however this time it was covered in a thick foot of new snow that had fallen during the past month. After walking past the flowing stream we stepped out onto the lake and the snow felt heavy under foot. The months' snowfall had compacted slightly under its own weight. It was a hopeful sign that the ice would be frozen stronger with the weight of a heavier snow pack sitting on top.
With Mohammed in the snow shoes and compacting the pile, and the three of us pushing the surrounding snow into the pile, it didnt take long for the quinzhee to double in height. Sitting at about 1.5 meters it was starting to look tall enough to be hollowed out to fit a few people inside. Alex, Aidan and myself stopped to discuss whether it was tall enough and...
"crack...crack...CRACK..CRACK!!!"
We stare at eachother, and then up to Mohammed on the mound. "Get down mate!" I shout.
Alex is staring at the ice, "look, there are the cracks!, but there are more of them". We must have underestimated the strength of the ice sheet. The cracks looked worse than the previous occasion. We knew that we couldn't stay on the ice any longer. You could see a slight split level on either side of the cracks. Defeated, we made our way back to Alex's house in the knowledge that staying on the ice was too much of a risk.
The prospect of finishing Alex's quinzhee was looking like lesser of a reality as we made our way through the front door, bringing in a small trail of wet snow behind us. There was enough snow in the pile to have it finished, we just needed the ice to be safe underneath it. If we were to finish it, we would have to wait until it was safe to go back onto the ice.

CHAPTER FIVE - FIRE AND ICE

Almost two months had passed since Alex and myself had made our first trip out to the lake to build the quinzhee., and we were a few days out from the next full moon. Alex had seemed to have gone underground and I hadn't heard from him for the entire month. Upon messaging him, his response was that he had just left town and was making his way to Hawaii to chase a girl that he'd met the other week in town. Fair enough, I thought. That sounded like exactly the sort of thing Alex would do. I wondered if I'd ever see him again and thought there was a slim to no chance, considering he refused to have a facebook account, and it was likely to be a long time before I ever returned to Canada if at all.
I decided to round up Aidan to see if he was keen to join me out to the lake. Not surprisingly he was keen, and had already convinced his friend Keith to join us. I'm not sure what happened to Mohammed, but I'd heard he had left town back to Edmonton and I didn't have his contact.
We made a plan to head out the next night just after the full moon when the weather forecast was to be clear. I made sure that in continuation of Alex's tradition we had some joints for the trip. On the next evening just before dark we left from our apartment block on the South end of town, where many of us ski staff lived. The apartments were on the edge of the national park forest, so we walked straight into the park to hit one of the walking trails that skirted town.
After a short time, the trail coincidentally led us past the rope swing tree that Alex and I had earlier found drunken delight in swinging from. Aidan and Keith had a go, but we continued on along the trail to arrive at the frozen lake about an hour after sundown. Again our surroundings were bright with reflected moonlight, as if it had been lit by a thousand floodlights. Pyramid Mountain was standing in the distance, solitary and commanding respect as it had done in the park for millenia. The quinzhee snow pile stood out clearly from the snow covered lake as we approached from the edge. It had lost some of it's height as the snow must have compacted under its own weight. However, it had become set like cement, and would take a good effort to hollow out. We decided to add a bit more height, using some of the new snow that had covered the ice from the previous month. Conscious that adding more weight may crack the ice again, we were content to only add another foot of snow and decided that at about 1.5 meters height and 3 meters round that the pile was big enough.
Recalling that one of the snowmakers from the hill, a local guy had recommended that we poke sticks through the side of the quinzhee to set a safe wall thickness. This would mean that when we hollowed it out from the inside that we'd be less likely to dig right through the wall. I went to the edge of the lake and gathered an armload of sticks from a nearby tree than had fallen over. I stopped to inspect a canoe that had been frozen into the ice, and was chained to a post. An unlikely sign of spring that would arrive in a few months to melt away the ice sheet, taking the quinzhee down the streams with it.
With Aidan and Keith taking turns to hollow out from the side, I made sure that our sticks gave us enough thickness so that there was no risk that we'd dig right through. Hollowing out the inside was by far the hardest part to this endeavour, and by the time the floor was cleared and the roof smoothed, it may have been about 9pm, having past a few hours since we left the apartment. Along the ice floor of the quinzhee was a split level of ice sheet. Clear signs of the cracks that had managed to sober us up on the two previous expeditions to the lake.
The sticks were pulled out as there was now enough room for us three to squeeze inside and sit upright. "Now what do we do, haha?" says Keith, considering that the quinzhee was complete. "I don't really know bro, I guess we're done" was my response. Feeling a bit lost, I wonder briefly as well..."what was the point of this?", but I keep that to myself. I'm familiar with the feeling of puzzlement at the completion of a project and consider for a second how the enjoyment was in the adventure out to the lake, and in the process of trying to build the quinzhee.
"Why don't we light a fire?", Aidan suggests pointing to the pile of sticks laying outside the door.
"That is a great idea mate, we've got these sticks. I reckon they'll light".
I slide my way outside outside the opening that we've made for the door and and pass the sticks through. The wood is thin, and dry enough to get started without any real effort. We sit inside as the flames takes under its own heat. The ceiling above it begins to melt, and Aidan goes outside to put a small hole through to create a chimney. I slip out the door and look back at the quinzhee. The light from the fire is penetrating the thin walls of the quinzhee, lighting lit up like an orb emanating a yellow glow from middle of the lake. Looking back through the door I can see the fire roaring up as Aidan pushes a hole through above it.
We slide back inside the quinzhee and I pull a pre-rolled joint from my jacket pocket. We light it on the fire, in honour of our French Canadian drifter friend, Alex. After three trips out to the lake we had finally finished the quinzhee that he had started two moons ago.

THE END