Right after college I stumbled into my dream job working for a small geotech firm that maintains water sampling wells in remote areas near large oil and natural gas projects in the Midwestern states. Part of my job was to drive and/or hike out to these wells and perform maintenance on the external hardware. If a unit stopped collecting data or started having errors I would go out and diagnose the problem and fix it. The vast majority of the time the problems stemmed from hunters shooting up solar panels or rodents getting into the electronics boxes and chewing up wires, both of these problems are easy fixes, so I was basically paid to go to remote and absolutely beautiful parts of the country alone and fix minor issues.
About two years into my employment with this company I got called in from a vacation to complete a job. It was February and almost Valentine’s Day so to make up for all the travel I do during the year I had taken a week off to be with my girlfriend, on the third day of vacation my boss called. He said that there was a job in Wyoming that needed immediate attention and that both of the senior technicians had turned it down and said that I should be the one to get the job. I was furious but my boss offered me overtime for all time worked on the project so I accepted and took off in a company 4x4 SUV the next morning.
The drive to the site was long boring and uneventful. The part of Wyoming I was driving to was having a bit of a dry winter, which did not mean that there was not snow on the ground, it just meant that the roads were easily passable. The morning of the second day of my trip I arrived at the grove of conifer trees on a hill crest that marked the site, or at least as close as I could drive to the site this time of year. The actual well was located about two miles from the small barely visible dirt road I was parked on. Rocks, snow, mud, and rolling hills made attempting to get my SUV the rest of the way a fool’s errand. I geared up in my best winter gear grabbed the tool bags that would be the most important for quick repairs and then set off on my hike with only the howling of the freezing cold wind to keep me company.
I did not realize exactly how cold it was outside until half way into my trek over the snow covered hills that I noticed that my breath was solidifying into ice crystals on my beard, I tried my best not to think about the cold and I carried on. Each time I crested a hill I could look back at the stand of trees in the distance with my SUV parked right next to it, it was a reassuring sight that helped me forget the cold. A couple of hours into my journey I finally reached the small valley between two steep hills that contained the test well, and within a few minutes of reaching my destination I had already found the rat chewed wire and replaced it. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at this whole journey being for a fifteen minute quick fix. I packed my gear and started back to the warmth of my SUV. Nearly halfway through my trip I crested my first hill and off in the distance I saw the reassuring sight of my SUV sitting next to the tree grove, then I saw something move.
I could barely make it out at this distance but it appeared that the outline of a person was leaning out around the edge of the SUV, almost as if someone had noticed me at the same time I had noticed them. My first thought was that it was a local who’s vehicle had broken down somewhere down the road as I could not see any other vehicle sitting anywhere near mine. I figured this person was very cold so I took off down the first hill moving quickly along the path I had made earlier until I crested the second hill much closer to the SUV than before. The person was now standing a few feet away from the SUV and was facing right towards me as if they had been watching the crest of the hill waiting for me to reappear. I could make out that the person was a woman she was wearing light colored denim jeans a puffy jacket that was a slightly lighter shade of blue than navy and a large muted orange stocking cap that looked like something I would of worn in the 80’s or early 90’s. Then I noticed the bundle of cloth she had clutched to her chest, my heart sank as I realized that this woman who was waiting for me to return was standing out in the bitter cold holding a child.
If I wasn’t already exhausted I would have been running down the hill and up the crest of the next but my body could not handle that much more exertion so I briskly made my way through the next valley and up to the next crest. She was no longer standing outside of my SUV and for a moment I thought she might have left then I noticed movement inside the cab. She was sitting in the passenger seat of my vehicle, the cold must have driven her to break into my SUV. I remember thinking to myself that I really hope she hadn’t broken out a window because then we are all in for a long cold ride to the nearest town. I didn’t have time to think about these things though I only had one more hill to go and then I could get this woman and her baby out of here. I somehow managed to jog the last hill and crested it to find that I could no longer see into the SUV because the windows were frosted over. I was relieved that she hadn’t broken out a window. As I walked up to the SUV breathing heavy from my exertion I reached out and grabbed the handle and pulled expecting the door to the passenger side to be unlocked but it did not budge. The windows were so heavily fogged that I could not see inside of the vehicle even while standing next to it so as I unlocked the door and opened it I was surprised to find that no one was sitting inside.
I ran over to the driver side turned the vehicle and the defroster on and began honking the horn and yelling hoping that the woman hadn’t wondered off for some reason. Then I had one of the heaviest realizations of my life, in the couple of inches of snow that surrounded the SUV along the side of this road there were only one set of footprints, mine. I slowly slide into the driver seat of my SUV and almost as if on autopilot as my mind wrapped around the situation I popped it into drive and hit the gas. As I pulled back out onto the road a heavy gust of wind wiped up the loose snow from the ground forming a glittering flowing mist across the road in front of me and for a brief moment I made out the form of a woman amongst the flowing vale of snow. I will never forget that moment her face was blue and contorted in a way that screamed pain and her eyes were rolled back in her head and just as my eyes moved down to see the bundle in her arms the snow settled and I tore down the road back toward home. I made the decision to never mention this to anyone because then it might seem too real, but a few days after I got back to work one of the older technicians Mike stopped by my cube chuckled and said “Don’t worry son you’re not crazy.” Every day I think about the face of that woman and I wish that Mike was wrong.