Return To Sanctuary

“I think we should leave today,” says National Asset.

We had been debating when to make the drive back to Sanctuary for our Christmas stay. The norm means getting up in the dead of night to be on the road by 2:30 or 3:00 am. This way we avoid the intense morning traffic through Orange and LA counties. 

But it is now early afternoon.

“Okay,” I agree, after discussing of the merits of this plan. I make the house ready for departure, and gather things to load in the Prius. I find National Asset staring at the computer screen.

“What?” I ask.

“The road is closed up by the Grapevine,” he says sorrowfully. “They are diverting traffic to 101. It will add two hours to the drive.”

More discussion follows. We decide to go anyway. By the time we get through L.A. we are delighted to find that  the road has opened. We reach the summit, and just before descending the Grapevine in the early dusk of a winter day, the mountains are iridescent with a layer of fresh white snow. But the road is clear and dry. We keep moving on.

The long drive is uneventful. The cats mostly sleep by my feet, tucked under a small quilt so they aren’t frightened by all the things flashing by outside the windows. On about our eighteenth such trip, they began poking their heads up to watch out the windshield, paws on the dash, as we turned onto Madrone Forest Drive. I thought: it must be the scent of evergreen trees that signals we are almost there.

Several trips later they began to surface earlier, as we would turn off Highway 49 onto Brunswick Road, about ten minutes from Sanctuary.  I thought: it must be the reduction of our speed. Smart creatures!

But last night the cat version of are we there yet? began way down by Stockton, still a few hour's drive from Sanctuary. I’ve tried, but I just cannot think of a reason for this one. Must be the shear fatigue from being cooped up in the little car. I can certainly relate.

By now it is very dark, and the roads are becoming less and less trafficked as we drive. We watch the outside temperature drop degree by degree. We begin to see patches of snow alongside the roads. I hold the two car-weary cats tightly on my lap.

“It’s 22 degrees,” I announce as we head north on Highway 49, through Auburn's fourteen stoplights. Since there is almost no cross traffic, we hit most of them on green.

“It’s 20 degrees,” I chirp, noticing that now the roadsides and woods are mostly covered with white.

We exit the highway. I read the road sign on Brunswick Road. Out loud.

“Chains advised when snow on road,” I quote. “Should we put the chains on?”

“No,” says The Asset.

We turn left onto Idaho-Maryland Road, where the perennial Icy sign is finally in season once again.

“Should we put the chains on now?” I ask as we navigate the curvy, upwardly inclined road.

“No,” says The Asset. Again.

We finally turn onto Madrone Forest Drive. Thankfully, it has already been plowed by one of the residents who takes care of this with his tractor. But there is still some packed snow and ice on the roadway, shiny in places with the ominous black spots I have learned not to walk on.

“It’s 19 degrees,” I say with increasing panic in my voice. “Chains now?”

“Not yet.”

By now Domino and Simon are straining towards the dash to look out the windshield. They know the end of the drive is near and are very impatient. We make it about half way up the mile long road, to the place where it makes a big ‘U’ and climbs most steeply. The car slows down. The wheels are slipping. We start sliding backwards down the road, then manage to come to a stop. I feel like we are perched precariously in the extremely dark mountainous woods and fear we may still be there in the morning when our neighbors wake up and try to get down the road to church.

The Asset slowly backs farther down the hill, guns it a bit and tries to make another run. No good.

“Chains?”

“Yep. Chains.”

He backs, well, slides down to a mostly level spot, gets out and rummages in the back of the Prius for the brand new chains we had picked up at the dealer just this morning. Just in case. He finds them on the bottom of the pile and climbs back in the driver's seat. We huddle in the now freezing car. I pull out the actual chains and try to figure out how they work. He reads the small print instructions by the light of his iPhone. Incredibly, having never put chains on anything before, I see how they work and get out and begin snaking one under the front tire. He does the same to the other, and we get back in the car to make another run up the hill.

This time it works. I am incredibly thankful no one will find us there blocking the road when the sun comes up. We make it to Sanctuary at the end of the road. It is a challenge to open the gate against the thick blanket of snow, but I do. Extreme cold is a powerful motivator. The Asset decides to chance the sloping, snow-covered driveway to get closer to the house, and I agree. We can worry about getting it back up another day. I don’t particularly want to carry cats all the way down it in my non-snow-shoes. We successfully park in front of the house. I unlock the doors and we begin unloading stuff.

“It feels warm in here!” I announce in amazement.

“It’s 45 degrees,” The Asset says. I marvel how 45 degrees can feel so warm.

The first thing I do is build a fire in the wood stove. The next is turn on the brand new heat pump system we had installed during reconstruction. But it isn’t working. We are too tired and too cold to mess with it, so I pile extra quilts on our bed and we climb in it. All four of us. Even the cats with their thick winter coats are cold tonight.

I can’t get warm. Our bedside clock/thermometer shows the temperature outside is still dropping. It is now 15 degrees out there, and still 45 in here. I pull quilts up over my head, but I need to leave an air hole to breath through. My nose feels like a small iceberg.

“I can’t get warm,” I say, my voice sounding fractious even to me. It is about 1:30 am, and I am just done in for the day. I get up and put on a second pair of Solmates to help my frigid toes. I pull the knitted sweater I had worn all day long in the car over my flannel pajamas. Even with the soft wool of its hood wrapped around my head and neck, I am still cold. I think about the romance of Yuri and Lara in the snow-bound country house in Doctor Zhivago. It doesn't help.

Eventually the combined body heat of two people and two cats under pounds and pounds of quilts wins out and I achieve the necessary body temperature to be able to sleep.

The next morning The Asset discovers icicles in the outdoor unit of the heat pump. He yells for me to bring him a flat blade screw driver, and I am horrified at the thought of him desperately sticking it in the frozen workings of our newest appliance. He dispatches the ice in about three seconds and I hear the heater turn on. It seems miraculous that the unit can extract heat out of 15 degree air, but somehow it does. And I must confess that I am sorry about all the things I wanted to say to the nice young man who sold us the unit while laying awake during the dark, cold night.

We are now up to 66 degrees, indoors at least. The bare oaks stretch their arms up, up into the cloudless blue. The evergreens bow under the weight of fresh, clean snow. Deer tracks crisscross the thick blanket of white that spreads over everything, erasing property boundaries.  No birds twitter, no squirrels leap from branch to branch. Everything is utterly still, waiting.