A Handful of Seconds.

Early Winter, 2003?

Ben and I were driving up to Tahoe late at night as a storm system was blowing into the mountains. The idea was to get up to Squaw just as the snow was falling hard enough to close the road and keep all of the rest of the people from the valley from coming up and crowding the slopes.

As we approached the summit on I-80 it was late and we were both tired. Ben was driving and I’m sure we were listening to some awful electro-dance music at an unreasonable volume. Snow was falling and the road was covered in a thin layer of ice and powder, just enough to fill in the tracks from previous cars. We had the road to ourselves and I was starting to nod off despite the volume of the music in the car.

We were far enough up into the mountains that the only light came from our headlights and the bits of snow reflecting back at us, like small bright specks falling slowly to the ground. Just ten feet off the road the trees formed a dark wall and made our path seem like a tunnel through the mountain.

Suddenly the rearview mirrors of the car were filled with bright lights. A small white pick-up truck swerved by us. As the pick-up accelerated past us and started to move back into our lane it fishtailed to the right and then the left. Within a handful of seconds the truck drove off the road and disappeared into the dark.

Ben slowed the car to a stop and we both looked at each other with the same What-the-fuck-should-we-do-now look. Ben put on his hazard lights and dialed 911 while I grabbed my gloves and pulled the hood on my jacket over my head.

I crunched out into the snow in my sneakers and walked along the side of the road for about 30 yards. All along the left hand side was a drainage ditch filled with snow, and I quickly came upon a set of red tail lights shining out from the ditch. The truck had plunged nose first off the road and was lying on its left side pointing down at an angle.

I slid into the ditch along side the bed of the truck and down to the passenger side window. Inside a young woman in the driver seat looked back at me and reached her hand up. She was uninjured, but had been pinned to the driver side door by a few large boxes. I grabbed her hand and pulled her up so she could get clear of the boxes that had her trapped. Struggling with the seatbelt for a moment, she unclipped it and climbed out the passenger window with me into the snow.

We both walked up the ditch to the side of the road just as a CalTrans truck was approaching. She looked over at me, her face lit up by the orange spinning lights on the top of the approaching emergency vehicle, “Everything I own was in the back of that truck. I was moving to Reno and now everything is in that ditch.” I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just nodded and waited there with her while she shivered in the falling snow.

A few moments later a man stepped out of the CalTrans truck and I walked back to Ben’s car. The heat inside felt good and started to melt the snow caked around my ankles and calves. We closed the doors and slowly made our way back onto the road and over the summit. Neither of us had any trouble staying awake for the rest of the drive.