Everyone has tales about the strange and bizarre. My story is about how my half-hole mask saved my life, and continues to save my life to this very day. Late in December, I was traveling north from California to my home state of Oregon. Nothing fancy, I was just going to visit the family for the holidays. On my way north I hit a small snow storm, nothing awful, just a lot of snow falling all at once.
I wasn't worried about the small increase of snow at first, considering I had snow tires installed before I started my long journey home. I did, however, get a little hesitant to drive when the snow started to really come down. The large amount of falling snow coupled with the large amount already littering the ground as I traveled higher into the mountains caused me to consider finding a place to stay for the night. I figured I could get some sleep while the storm passes over, that and the fact that I could give my car's heater a break before it would decide to burst into flames- or worse, just stop working all together. I scanned as much of the landscape as I could, but there were no buildings in the immediate area.
The only other option that I had for my predicament was to keep driving and hope there was a town or exit nearby that I could take in order to escape from the storm. I must have been driving for at least an hour before I saw a sign up ahead indicating how far the closest city was. My heart sank a little when I read 162 miles as it flew by my windshield and vanished into the snowy night. At this point the snow was beating against my windshield, and I knew that I wasn't going to last 162 minutes let alone 162 miles.
The digital clock on my radio read 1:21AM, and I decided that the next turn off I saw I would take and hope that I could find a neighborhood that will produce some results on my current endeavor. My thought process was: either freeze to death in my car, or stay the night at some random person's house. Weighing the two options in my head I picked the only thing a sane person would pick and go with the house.
Another 30 minutes flew by, and still no luck finding a place to pull off. Just when I was starting to loose hope I saw a turn off in the distance. A small shape started make its way closer into my head lights and on further inspection it was reveled to me that they were two wooden poles that possibly belonged to a fence. When I turned onto the road between the two wooden poles the ground beneath me felt rocky and rough, like I was traveling on gravel. I didn't drive for too long before I started to see a small cabin creep into my field of view.
The lights in the cabin were off, but the place seemed to be in good shape. I parked my car under a tall wild-looking tree that took residence on the cabin's front lawn. Getting out of my car, I immediately grabbed my extra jacket and put it on pulling the half-hole mask I wore around my neck up and over my ears to keep the heat around my face. I put my cap on and trudged up to the cabin after putting my cap snug on my head. As I traveled through the cold windy night up to, what I felt was my salvation I immediately regretted not getting any gloves for my hands.
Despite the irritation I had with my hands, my face and the rest of my body were comfortably warm so I didn't have much room to complain. I stuffed my frozen hands deep into my pockets and continued my journey across the cabin's lawn. As I made my way to the door I noticed something odd. There was no indication of life anywhere; there wasn't even a car in the front yard.
Taking my right hand out of my pocket I knocked 3 times, waiting patiently before saying "H-hello? Is anyone in there? I'm sorry to bother you so late at night, but I need a place to stay for a few hours."
Nothing answered my plea for help, so I knocked 3 more times on the door hitting my knuckles harder against the aged wood of the entrance.
"Hello?" I said again a little louder before continuing with "I'm not here to rob you or anything; I just need a place to stay for the rest of the night. I promise I'll be gone by sunrise."
