Tim Barton
Equipment Editor
[email protected]
He was headed west through Wyoming, and the weather was coming at him.
The day had been blue and clean, a January day whipped and sanitized by a steady wind from the north. His trailer was light now, and he fought to keep it straight against the crosswind. But the road was as clean as the sky, and he thought he might make it across and through the mountains around the Utah border and down the big hill into Salt Lake before the sun fell and the clouds and the sunless sky locked together like the snow.
He thought it was too cold to snow, but the bite of the wind died a little near sunset. The weatherman was saying snow and falling temperatures and wind. The wind kicked up again, and the steady line of dark cumulus from the north and west let loose. In an hour the snow was freezing into thick valleys on the road. He could see the taillights of the truck in front of him moving from side to side and the wheels churning the loose snow on top of the frozen, throwing it up and making ruts.
There was a shallow angle to the snow. It came straight across the road and slid to earth through his lights like geese landing millions at a time on a frozen lake, hitting the ice and tumbling, squawking in surprise to find the water hard. There was a weight to the snow, a deep, palpable reality to it like the weight of sleep just before the mind follows the eye into darkness.
He was not tired. The storm had its adrenaline that kept him awake, aware of every small movement of the truck and how the wind began to push him despite the weight of the load. He had heard his turbo wind up on the last uphill, and his manifold pressure gauge rose too quickly for him to believe he had much traction. The westbounders behind him were saying the road was closed a few miles back. Just before the Hole in the Wall, he got off.
There was no truckstop, just a small café about 100 yards west of the underpass, closed up tight. He did his log and crawled into his bedroll fully clothed, hoping to find the patience to sleep through the energy the storm gave him and the wind moving the truck.
