Frozen Moments
Trapped in a ravine in Northern Virginia
He thought she might be the most unattractive woman he had ever seen, and the sound of her voice was grating — especially at such an early hour.
He had been staying in the hotel for a week. It was a former Holiday Inn which had been sold to another company and rebranded as the Travel-Day Inn, and Evan Canfield had been noticing little things; details that could be filed away for later and used in his writing. It was one of the little things from which he took pleasure — being observant and cannibalizing slices of life to color his stories.
Evan was a photographer by trade, in Northern Virginia for a photo shoot at a convention, held in a venue that included a ritzy restaurant decorated in a fox hunting motif, but he had been thinking about his writing a lot. He loved the frozen moments he captured in his viewfinder, but writing was his true passion, and the comings and goings of the hotel patrons — and their individual quirks — made for fertile ground on which to base his characters and stories.
He noticed on his third day at the Travel-Day Inn that the front desk didn’t answer their phone, that the hallways smelled like smoke despite the “No Smoking” signs plastered everywhere, and that the person in the room next to him drank a 12-pack of Keystone beer every night then set the case with empty cans outside his hotel room door for the housekeeping crew to take away.
He filed it all away for later use and went about his business.
It was day 7 of an 8 day job, and he was up early to catch the Travel-Day’s adequate breakfast buffet. He sat at a table for 2 with a paper plate of overcooked scrambled eggs, cinnamon roll, cup of yogurt, plus a cup each of orange juice and black coffee. From somewhere to his left, he heard a young male speak with a slightly raised voice, louder than it should have been.
“Well, it hurts,” the young man said.
“Jeremy,” the woman said, but before she could finish, the young man muttered something under his breath.
“Jeremy,” she said again, and the young man kept muttering.
When his voice finally fell silent, she said “Well, you’re absolutely right, Jeremy, why don’t you just…” until her voice trailed off to a level that Evan could not make out the rest of her sentence. It was clear the woman was talking to a young person and her condescending tone suggested it must be her son.
“Everything I tell you to do…” she said, “...take some Tylenol, or wrap it… you don’t do it,” the woman chided. “You probably broke it.”
Jeremy said something, then another young male chimed in and the woman said, “Joshua, you stay out of this.” Their tone was again borderline disruptive.
Evan turned to glance their direction; tried to get a look at the rude breakfast party. They were sitting near the floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room, backlit by brilliant white snow which had fallen the night before, and Evan had a hard time making out who he was looking at. He had reached the age where his eyesight was not what it used to be and he had a hard time with bright environments. From what he could make out, they were a party of four — one adult, two teenage boys and a teen girl.
As he continued eating his breakfast, Evan contemplated simply taking it back to his room but opted to finish it in the dining room. In the ten minutes he remained, the woman said Jeremy’s name at least 7 or 8 more times.
With a grunt, Evan Canfield rose from his table and struggled to put his coat on — his shoulders had been giving him trouble for years and he had a hard time raising his arms high enough to get them into his sleeves. When he had accomplished the task, he grabbed his plate and went to the trash can.
He heard the woman’s voice again.
“Jeremy!” she said in a stern tone. “Do the right thing.”
Jeremy mumbled something to the effect of “they’ll do it…” and his mother said, “Be a standup guy.”
Evan craned his neck in time to see the teenager gather up his used plate, cup and wrappers from where he had left them on the breakfast table and dispose of them. When Evan turned back to dump his own plate, the woman was standing right in front of him at the same trash can.
She was a pear-shaped woman, mid-forties he thought, but looked much older. She had salt & pepper hair, styled in a mullet. Glasses, no makeup, wearing a faded brown 2XL t-shirt and no bra underneath; her heavy breasts hung three quarters of the way to her navel. The woman wore reddish sweatpants, and crowned her ensemble with what Evan thought was the piece-de-resistance of poor taste — a blue fanny-pack with the pouch in the front.
The woman dropped her plate in the garbage can and the employee in charge of the continental breakfast spoke up.
“Thank you, Vera,” the employee said.
“You got it,” Vera said in return. “We’ll see you next time,” she finished, in the distinct dialect of Appalachian hill folk.
Evan dumped his own trash and headed for the elevator. The door was just closing when a hand punched into the opening and forced it to retract. Vera joined him on the elevator.
He looked at his phone and did not meet her gaze — he did not want to be drawn into a conversation with her.
The elevator rose one floor and when the door opened, Vera exited first and the photographer took his time exiting. His room was the very last room on the second floor and he tended to walk fast — he did not want to be trailing the woman all the way down the hall.
Vera disappeared around the corner and when enough time had passed, just a few seconds really, Evan proceeded from the elevator. However, he had not even rounded the corner when he heard Vera’s voice again.
“Boys!” she scolded. “Knock it off.”
When Evan rounded the corner, he saw Vera’s two teenage sons, maybe 15 and 17 by the looks of them, with the stocky builds of high school wrestlers, squared-off and puffed-up like they were going to fight in the hallway while their teenage sister looked on.
The smaller of the two young men warned his larger sibling.
“I’ll put your ass to sleep, boy” he said, and the two of them were clearly right at the precipice of a fight — fists clenched, ready to throw hands.
It was at that moment, however, that they noticed Evan coming down the hallway, which they were entirely blocking with their macho standoff.
“Knock it off,” Vera said again, and the boys bravado faded. The party of four began to file into room 220 one at a time, and Evan passed just in time to see Vera’s teenage daughter peeking out from under one hand that covered her mouth and most of her face. She made eye contact with Evan and wore an expression that said I am so embarrassed.
Evan gathered his gear for a half-hour trip to his shoot. He had three Nikons in his camera bag and an assortment of lenses and filters. All of the formal work had been done earlier in the week and the days’ shoot would be more casual, candid stuff to add flavor to the final publication. That meant he didn’t have to bring tripods or lights or any other heavy gear, and that made him happy.
The realities of being a stroke survivor were always with him. He didn’t have the sensation is his fingertips that he once had and his grip strength was diminished as well. Holding cameras and manipulating switches and buttons was hard enough. If he could avoid having to fumble with extra equipment and tripods, it made his day just a little bit easier.
Likewise, his eyesight had declined in recent years. He was a type two diabetic, a condition which he had not given enough respect, and when he drank too much during the pandemic, he noticed a rapid decline in his eyesight that alarmed him. He quit drinking, but his eyesight had diminished notably by the time he took action, and that also presented challenges.
His eye doctor had failed him, and he took matters into his own hands, getting a new prescription for bifocal eyeglasses, and a prescription for single-vision contact lenses so he could wear extra-dark sunglasses outdoors on bright days. That meant he also had to bring a pair of reading glasses with him everywhere he went, and he was constantly changing between the two — reading glasses when he needed to look at his phone, sunglasses when he needed to look at the road. Even so, when he went by road signs at highway speeds, he could rarely make them out. By the time he was close enough to read them, he was already past them.
Thank God for in-car navigation had been his recent mantra.
He took one last look at the stuff he laid out on the bed, then checked his pockets.
Spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch.
He grabbed his backpack and his camera bag, and allowed the hotel door to slam behind him as he headed out for another day’s work.
Evan got in the car and went through his typical routine. He took off his sunglasses and put on his reading glasses, then dialed up navigation directions to the convention center. He pressed “navigate” then took off his reading glasses and replaced them with his aviator shades. He’d always said “everybody looks good in aviators” and he liked the way he looked in them, too.
His reading glasses went into the divot on the top of his truck’s dashboard, and his phone into a mount clipped to an air vent in the dash. He started to roll out of the hotel parking lot and the pleasant navigation voice said “turn left on Estate Drive.” Evan Canfield followed instructions and he was off and running; headed out of town.
The highway wound through the Shenandoah Mountains and Evan thought it was some of the most beautiful landscape he had ever experienced. Oaks and maples and pines lined the roadway, tall and spindly with knobby bark on their trunks, and the morning sunlight shone through, casting long shadows of twisted mimicry on the forest floor.
The three inches of snow that had fallen the previous night rested in rounded piles that were already melting — 30 degrees had given way to 34-and-climbing and runoff trickled across the highway lanes.
He passed the turnoff for Bull Run Mountain, crossed the mighty Shenandoah River, and drove by Greenbriar, the resort where the US Government once built a doomsday bunker for bigwigs. It was all magnificent scenery.
The navigation gave an occasional direction — take such-and-such exit, and keep right. Evan followed dutifully and he could occasionally make out the lettering on the corresponding signs, but not every time.
As he neared the top of one of Virginia’s undulating mountain highways, however, the contact lens in his right eye suddenly felt strange, like a piece of grit had unexpectedly infiltrated his eye. As he had done a thousand times before, Evan shut his right eye and rolled it around under his closed eyelid in an attempt to clear the irritant as his truck sailed up the road at 65 miles per hour.
Evan felt a sharp pain in his right eye and when he opened it, he realized he could no longer focus. His left eye was fine, but his vision in his right eye was blurry.
How am I going to see through my viewfinder?
The thought had no sooner occurred to him when he had another.
You're gonna have to shoot everything from the LCD screen.
He was immediately appalled at the thought.
He wasn't a tourist. He didn't take photos using the LCD screen.
The photographer reached up and removed his sunglasses with one hand, then extended his right index finger and reached toward his eyeball, intending to swirl the contact lens on his eye and clear any obstruction. When he gently placed his fingertip against what should have been his contact lens, he realized he could feel his finger against his eye.
His contact lens had split down the middle.
He blinked his eyes and the torn contact lens dropped right out of his right eye and landed on the back of his hand. He glanced at it, and as he did, his left had unconsciously pulled at the steering wheel a little.
Evan looked up and saw his RAM truck drifting toward the shoulder, and the 50-foot drop just beyond it. He jerked back on the steering wheel to bring himself back between the lines, but his panic betrayed him.
The truck rode back onto the highway and into an oncoming lane, where a sedan blasted it's horn. He careened back to the right, and the overcorrection was irreversible. The truck slid sideways on the slippery pavement, then caught on a dry spot.
A mailbox shaped like a tractor collapsed under the RAM’s bumper as Evan and the truck crossed the shoulder and went over the side.
The truck struck a skinny pine and sheared it off at the base, then continued it's journey to the bottom of the ravine, bouncing like a kids’ amusement park ride. It careened through the forest and the windshield surrendered to a limb, shattering into a spiderweb of a thousand tiny cracks.
At the bottom of the ravine, a babbling brook that had trickled for centuries without a disruption was rudely assailed when the truck came crashing to a stop in its midst. Evan’s head slammed against his steering wheel and his fear and alarm swam away to blackness.
The sun was low on the other horizon by the time Evan Canfield regained consciousness. Crickets and birds chirped in the wilderness, but the old photographer screamed in agony and the rest of the forest fell eerily silent.
He struggled to stay coherent; to focus. He felt absolutely freezing. He looked around and realized he was still in his truck, somewhere in the woods.
What happened?
The surrounding forest cast eerie shadows in the golden light of sunset. He could see the wilderness. It surrounded him on all sides and he became aware of the sound of rushing water in his ears.
Where am i?
He turned his head and caught a brilliant reflection of sunlight in his eyes that nearly blinded him. He awakened fully, and all at once he realized the gravity of his situation.
He was still in his truck, seated in the driver’s seat, but the windshield was broken and he sat in freezing cold water. His truck had come to rest in the cold mountain water and dammed the stream enough that it had started to back up. At some point in his unconscious state, the cold water had pooled behind his truck and overflowed into the cabin.
He was chest-deep in an icy pool of February runoff in the mountains of Northern Virginia.
In an attempt to escape, Evan lurched forward and tried to extricate himself. A brilliant flash of pain seared in his brain, shot like a lightning bolt from somewhere below the water’s surface. He saw red in the water and it was clear he was severely injured. If he could see beneath the water, he would have seen the truck seat had slid forward in the accident and the dashboard had caved-in, crushing Evan Canfield’s legs like a lobster claw at a seafood boil.
He was trapped.
Evan tried again to squirm out of his seat and the ragged metal on the underside of his dash tore at his legs and sent jolts of electric agony into his brain as his senses ran away again.
It was dark when Evan awoke again. He shivered in the cold stream, but the chilly state of the water was enough to dull the pain in his legs and he was grateful for it. The memory of the accident was faint in his mind, but he knew he was in serious, deadly trouble.
He took stock of his situation and noticed his phone — it was still clipped to the vent on his dash, and it was just above the water’s surface.
Oh my god.
Evan practically lunged for his phone, his arm sending forth a splash as it thrust from beneath the water, clumsy and numb.
Please God, let it work.
His frozen hand pawed at the phone and the screen lit up.
“Yes! Thank you!” he said aloud.
Evan swiped at the screen, careful not to dislodge it from the mount, and it unlocked. He tapped the green phone icon with one trembling finger, then the “keypad” tab. His tremors were too pronounced and he missed.
He tried again, then again.
Finally, on the fourth try, he succeeded and the keypad appeared. In a deliberate, careful fashion, he tapped ‘9,’ then ‘1,’ twice, and pressed the call button.
He waited but nothing seemed to happen.
What’s happening?
Evan looked at the task bar across the top of the screen and remembered the struggle with his problematic eyesight.
The contact lens.
His contact lens had split. He remembered it now.
He couldn’t see what was happening in the tiny task bar at the top of the screen. Did he not have service? Had the phone been damaged in the accident? He didn’t know because he couldn’t see well enough.
His reading glasses no longer rested in the divot on top of the dashboard — they’d been lost in the accident. Evan scanned the truck for any sign of them, but they were nowhere to be seen. The truck had come to rest at a nose-down angle in the stream at the bottom of the ravine and he thought his glasses were likely somewhere in the water, near his feet. He leaned forward and attempted to feel for the cheap Walmart readers beneath the water, but felt nothing. When he tried to reach further, he realized he couldn’t with putting his face in the freezing water.
A fucking contact lens.
Evan was incredulous at the situation in which he found himself. Freezing to death in a mountain stream at the bottom of a ravine because of a goddamn contact lens.
Someone at the convention would surely have called the police by now, alarmed that he didn’t show up.
But how will they find me?
Evan craned his neck and examined the dark interior of his truck, frantic to find anything — a tool, a leverage point.
In the back seat, his backpack hung suspended by a shoulder strap from the headrest. From the partially unzipped backpack, his black and yellow Nikon camera strap dangled in the cab. It was nylon mesh, and strong. If he could get his hand on it, he thought he might be able to use it to drag himself out from under the crumpled dashboard.
It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.
It wasn’t getting any warmer in the water and he knew he had no choice. Time was running out.
Evan Canfield raised his arm out of the water and reached back as far as he could. He couldn’t raise his arm above his head to reach the camera strap. He groaned in agony each time he stretched for the backpack, his bad shoulder sending throbbing pain down his neck and into his back.
No matter what he did, he could not free himself.
Evan went back to his phone and started tapping.
He tried 9-1-1 again.
No response.
With great difficulty, he called up his contact list, tapping at the appropriate unseen buttons and tabs on memory alone since he could not see what he was doing.
He tried his son.
No response.
His tremors impeded every gesture and he fumble-fingered into his music app by accident.
Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice” blared forth from the phone’s speaker.
Great. I can listen to music while I freeze to death.
He thumbed the phone again and it fell silent.
Evan Canfield was freezing to death, trapped in a stream at the bottom of a ravine in Northern Virginia, 350 miles from home, and nobody knew where he was. He had always prided himself on being a positive person, but he was struggling to remain hopeful.
Is this it for me?
Are these my last hours on Earth?
The thoughts occurred to him and felt very real, and at the same time, strange and unreal.
Is this what it’s like to die? Alone and helpless? With hours to contemplate your own mortality, waiting for the end?
He felt tired.
Very tired.
Evan just wanted to go to sleep.
But I have so much left to do.
A voice called out in the darkness and Evan again awakened into a freezing, hypothermic stupor. His brain was foggy and he was unsure what he’d heard.
“Hello?”
A voice rang out in the woods.
Weakly, Evan raised his head.
A light shone from the slope above, painting shadows that reached out like haunting fingers from the skinny pines dotting the landscape.
“Help,” Evan tried to call, but it only came out as a half-whispered croak.
The beam of the light swept back and forth across the ravine.
“Is somebody down there?” the voice called out.
“Yes,” Evan called, a little louder. “Please help me,” he pleaded.
The savior with the flashlight stepped onto the bank of the stream just above the truck.
“Am I hallucinating?” the old photographer wondered.
It was an angel.
A guardian angel.
She unzipped her fannypack and removed a walkie-talkie. She pressed the button and called into the speaker.
“Jeremy!” she said. “Send down the winch. A city slicker got himself in a hell of a pickle down here.”
On the shoulder of the roadway above, Vera’s two sons climbed out of her tow truck and unlocked the winch, pulling cable from the roll an arm’s length at a time while her teen daughter grabbed the radio in the wrecker and called for help.
Within minutes they had hooked the RAM to the winch and pulled the crushed truck out of the stream and onto the slope. With the task accomplished, Vera grabbed her walkie talkie and barked out some more orders to her stocky teenage sons.
“Bring down the blankets we use for the fancy pants Beemers and Caddy’s, and bring me the jack too!” she said. “And hurry up about it or this fella’s gonna freeze to death.”
With the RAM out of the water, the way in which Evan’s legs were trapped was finally visible. Vera simply took the old farm jack she kept behind the seat of the wrecker and braced it under a jagged piece of metal. She pumped on the jack handle a dozen times and the dashboard rose higher and higher until there was an audible SNAP and Evan’s legs were free.
“What the hell were you doin’ out here, Vera?” the State Policeman asked.
“On my way back from visiting my Mom down in Richmond,” she replied. She still wore her 2XL t-shirt and sweat pants.
The paramedics had Evan Canfield wrapped in blankets and loaded his stretcher into the back of the ambulance.
“How the hell’d you know he was down there?” the trooper asked.
“He took out the mailbox when he went over the side,” she said. “That’s old man Swinton’s old tractor mailbox. Welded it himself with spare parts from his old International Harvester.”
The trooper looked toward the shoulder, where the mailbox had stood. Skid marks marred the pavement and tree limbs were broken on the route where the truck had gone over the side.
“I always loved that mailbox,” she said. “Was a nice little landmark on our trip home. I always knew when I passed it that we were almost home. When I saw it wasn’t there anymore, it stood out to me.”
The paramedics rolled Evan Canfield’s stretcher into the back of the ambulance and he turned his head to call out.
“Thank you, Vera! You saved my life! I’ll never be able to thank you enough!”
“Yer fine,” she called back. “Git warm!”
Evan Canfield couldn’t see her very well, but he was sure she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
Troy Larson is a writer, digital content creator, and broadcast veteran with hundreds of podcast and broadcast credits to his name. Reach out on Facebook and on Instagram.