Siberia, Winter 1992

They’d just seen a frozen waterfall and were coming back down the mountain when Renaldo got lost. The wind was pushing snow into their eyes and turning the clumps of hair sticking out from under their caps into icicles. Growing up in Nicaragua and, more recently, Los Angeles, Renaldo had never seen snow before, let alone tundra, and in no time David and Kolya had gotten ahead of him.

At the fork, Renaldo did his best to remember which of the two paths they’d come up, but fast-falling snow had already obscured their footprints.

Not wanting to fall further behind, he arbitrarily chose the path on the right and stumbled through some snow-packed pine trees. Suddenly, pushing branches out of the way, he found himself above a cliff.

The drop was only about twenty feet, but the stream—the same one rushing behind the silver shield of ice upstream—gurgled over the rocks in dangerous-looking waves at the bottom. So beautiful, he thought.

He could see about two hundred yards, maybe more, into a wide open arena where flurries of soft snow jerked around in a wild whipping cascade, gentle and enraged, and where the stream was winding and burbling. Above him the mountains disappeared into the clouds as if they were evaporating into them. The trees looked like scales on some enormous, sedentary dragon.

I have to remember this, he thought, because this is why I came. I have to remember every detail.

Jeremy Russell has hiked, planed, bussed, trained and horse-backed his way across three continents and plans to add two more this year. A former daily news reporter for the Billings Gazette in Montana, his award-winning writing has appeared in publications from the New York Press to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His regular, ongoing contributions to Kitchen Sink Magazine (www.kitchensinkmag.com) earned him a nomination for the Pushcart Prize in 2005. He can be accessed online via www.jeremyrussell.com.