Trouble in the Forest

The Blue-Eyed Wolf: Chapter 4

It had been about fifteen minutes since Anastasia and Gizmo had started to retrace their journey back to their original path. During that fifteen minutes, Anastasia had been turning over countless possible outcomes to this situation in her head, none of them good. On the other hand, Gizmo was trotting along as if nothing was wrong, completely oblivious to the situation.

                      
It was then that Anastasia noticed something odd. The snow on the ground underneath her feet had begun to crack all around her and she could hear a rumble coming from the mountains above her. Some of the leaves and branches on the surrounding trees began to shake slightly, a few flakes of snow falling to the ground.

                       
Anastasia's heart dropped into her stomach and a flair of panic spiraled through her. Slowly she turned around to look behind her to try and find the source of the sound. To her horror, a large slab of snow at the top of the mountain had fallen and was hurtling directly towards her and Gizmo. It was an avalanche.

                       
She gasped with fear and stood still for a second pondering over the best course of action. Anastasia remembered when she was little, during her hikes with her father, he would not only educate her about the sweet wild berries, but he would also tell her about what to do in various dangerous situations.

                       
"Anastasia, I want you to understand the likeliness of these things happening is not high. However, you must know in case something were to ever happen. After all, you never know." She recalled her father telling her about avalanches one morning and how they are most likely to happen during heavy precipitation or due to human activities such as skiing. In her situation, it was the heavy snowfall that was to blame.

                       
Anastasia closed her eyes and focused on searching her memories to find what her father had told her to do in the case of an avalanche. Suddenly it came to her. The best thing to do if you're in the path of an avalanche is to run perpendicular to it and find something sturdy to hold onto.

                       
With this thought in mind, she picked up Gizmo and started running perpendicular to the avalanche. Luckily, since she was in a forest in the mountains it was not hard to find a tree. Anastasia ran to the tallest tree she could find that appeared to be sturdily rooted in the ground. Once she reached it, she tucked Gizmo inside her jacket against her chest, zipped up her jacket, and pressed herself up against the trunk of the tree with her arms tightly wrapped around it.

                       
Anastasia knew this was risky. If it was a large avalanche, it could have the power to uproot the tree she was holding onto and easily bury her and Gizmo in feet of snow. But she also knew she did not have much of a choice. The best thing she could do at that point was to hold on for dear life and pray.

                       
Terrified, she slowly lifted her head to check how close the avalanche was to colliding with her and Gizmo. The avalanche of snow was only seconds away and everything it had touched was hardly visible from her vantage point.

                                                                                                                                      
Preparing for impact, Anastasia squeezed her eyes shut and held onto the tree with all the strength she could muster.

                       
All at once, the sound became deafening and an ambush of snow washed over them. Snow pelted into Anastasia's face, stinging it like sharp icicles, and the cold blanketed around her. She could feel piles of snow collecting around her and it began to seep through her pants, melting upon contact with her warm leg. The power of the avalanche took Anastasia by surprise, and she struggled to keep her balance to avoid being swept away. It felt like an eternity and she was not sure how much longer she could hold on for before her muscles gave in.

                       
Suddenly, Anastasia's hand slid on the tree trunk as she attempted to move herself to gain better traction. She yelped in fear as both her hands began to slip away from the tree completely, but at the last minute, she managed to swing one arm out around the trunk and pull herself back up to it.

                       
Gizmo poked his head out of the top of Anastasia's jacket and whimpered as he surveyed the danger. Anastasia cried, "I know Gizmo. It is almost over!" Or so she hoped. The longer she held on the weaker she felt and she knew it was a matter of time before she and Gizmo joined the avalanche themselves.

                       
Luckily, the impact lessened in force shortly after until it was nothing but gentle spraying of snow on Anastasia's face. She stood still for a minute, in complete silence, trying to regain her breath. At last, she pulled away from the tree only to find herself stuck in snow that had caved her in up to her thighs.

                       
"Why?! As if this hiking trip hasn't gone bad enough already. Now, this. Great."

                       
Anastasia unzipped her jacket partly to pull Gizmo out and gently place him on the snow next to her. He started barking at her and desperately began to dig at the snow surrounding her once he realized she was unable to move.

                       
Anastasia groaned as she soon realized that the snow was too deep for her to manually dig herself out of and she had nothing that would be of any help in her backpack either. She began looking around for other possible ways she could free herself, and much to her delight, she noticed a sturdy tree branch a few inches above her head. That was it. She would reach for the tree branch and use what strength she had left to pull herself out. Anastasia knew there was a chance the branch could easily break but she had no other choice. She had to try.

                       
Anastasia reached above her for the snowy branch and stretched as much as she could to try and grab it. She managed to grab it with one of her hands and used the leverage she had gained to swing her other one onto it too. She made sure her hands were holding onto the branch tightly and then she used her upper body strength to heave her torso out of the snow. At first, she hardly moved an inch but after a few minutes, she was halfway out.

                       
Gizmo continued to dig mindlessly, hoping he was somehow helping. Meanwhile, Anastasia made one final pull and her feet popped out of the hole, bringing a heap of snow with it. She instantly let go of the branch and collapsed onto the ground, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation she was in.
                                                                          
Anastasia wearily arose to her feet after lying on the cold snow for a few seconds and was quickly ambushed by Gizmo circling her feet, grateful she was okay. She was happy they were both safe and the avalanche was not as bad as it could have been. As she looked around at the damage left behind, she noticed some smaller trees were uprooted and the snow was a few inches deeper than before.

                       
They had to get moving. With the snow deeper than before, walking would be more difficult and exhausting. Not to mention, the snow was still coming down heavily so the potential for more avalanches to follow was likely.

                       
With a startle, Anastasia remembered she still had her phone in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out of her pocket with her gloved hand and slipped off her glove briefly to gain better friction on the screen. Once she tapped it, she was meant with a glowing blue screen that revealed she only had 55% battery left and a no service bar in the left-hand corner. Groaning, she realized that the cold was draining her battery down faster than normal. After all, she had started this hike with 100% battery. She shut it down to reserve the battery for later use.

                       
Anastasia looked around to assess where she was. As expected, the snow had quickly covered her footprints and Gizmo's paw prints, so they had aimlessly been heading in the direction they thought they had come in. She was still surrounded by bushy evergreens as far as her eyes could see and no path was in sight. Above her, the sky was a deep-colored blue and was dotted with clouds, spitting out endless snowflakes. It was hard to tell for sure, but Anastasia assumed it was a little past noon. Taking a long breath, she reasoned she had plenty of time left to find her way back safely before nightfall. She just had to take it step by step.