The only crossable spot lay at the edge of a 20-foot dropoff. The way over was worse than a tightrope. There were gaps between rocks that had to be jumped. One slip and that would be it, you would be swept over the edge. Nor was there any way to search for a crossing up- or downstream. There were too many rocks to climb to even attempt to look. Which left the cliff crossing: impossible.

I stood staring until the two men caught up. Then they stood and stared. I talked to them. They had no food, no dry clothes, no tent and only wet down sleeping bags which sap heat from cold bodies. They were defenseless, and worse, they were succumbing. I didn't think I could cross the stream alone even though it looked as though Adrian had. I wondered if I shouldn't set up the tent, get in the sleeping bag and bite through the plastic bag at my belt to get crackers and chocolate and try to save the two men along with myself. But how could I? I still couldn't use my fingers. And if we did manage to last, who would find us?

*

THEN, FINALLY, it hit me. If I stayed, all three of us would die. They'd already given up and had sat down in the snow. The last stages of hypothermia were setting in, which meant they were already as good as gone. What chance would I have to make it through the night alone? It was highly likely I would die crossing the stream, but at least I would have tried to get out; I couldn't give up the way they had. At the same time one voice was telling me I was done for, another told me I wasn't. So I tried to cross.

I didn't go the logical, dangerous route. Instead I went for the deepest, slowest moving pool, made it to narrower braids of raging water. I then managed to throw my pack on a rock, which proved difficult but no more of an impasse than the stream had been once I realized that the rock was the last obstacle before solid land. The hardest part was over, or so I thought.

The trouble came when I tried to put the pack back on. One arm wouldn't move. No matter how hard I tried and concentrated it remained immobile and useless. And the other couldn't bend enough to be of any use. Meanwhile I'd started to shiver uncontrollably--the first symptom of hypothermia. I jumped up and down trying to keep warm. I couldn't laugh, the irony was too bitter--I'd made it across the stream, but to what end?

WITH NOTHING ELSE to do I looked back, wondering if the two men had tried to follow. They hadn't. Instead, they were staring at something else. Johnnie and the others were opposite me. Johnnie yelled, wanting to know how I'd gotten across. It took me too long to understand what he was saying, let alone to try to formulate an answer. At the same time I had enough clarity of mind left, slow as it worked, to realize hypothermia was really beginning to grip me. I could see myself fast approaching the state the two men were in but I knew Johnnie et al would soon be over to help.

In retrospect I shouldn't have been so sure. Neither Johnnie nor the others made any attempt to help the two men. Afterward they told me not only were they chiefly concerned with getting themselves down safely, but if the two men weren't ready to help themselves, why should they waste any of their valuable energy on two immobile men. I like to think they would have helped me regardless. As it was I can probably be thankful I was alone and a girl and had made it across the stream.

I can remember telling them once they reached me that, if they had to leave me, to be sure and let someone know where I was. I also asked them what would become of the two men. They agreed the men needed help, though I'm not sure how much they cared. I looked back a last time. I knew the men would die. But at the moment I didn't care either. I couldn't.

*

FOR THE first few minutes, after setting off again, I fell every ten or so steps. My mind couldn't control my legs, let alone summon the strength to boost me back up. Once down I would sway on my knees, occasionally falling flat on my face, until one or another or two of the men hoisted me up. As soon as they put a jacket on me I warmed up, regained some strength and considerably more sense. They wanted to make me drop my pack, as Mike had done. By then I knew enough to say no. We were below treeline, and although my fingers were still numb and non-functioning, there was no more snow, only rain. I knew I would make it the rest of the way.

I wouldn't have. As bad as the stream was where they'd found me, each successive one was worse--bigger and stronger. At times the only way I got across was by holding hands with two of the four men, never venturing into the middle alone. But by then we'd been through so much nothing could stop us. The streams were no more than a joke to be laughed at, while the eight-hour ordeal that had just passed seemed days distant. We'd even forgotten the two men we'd left in the snow. I remembered them, though, when a U.S. Forest Service Truck passed by. Two of us flagged it down and, caught up in overly-dramatic excitement, told the driver and his friend they had to send search parties out immediately, explaining why.

As soon as the search was sufficiently underway, the sheriff drove Johnnie and me back to the police station in Lone Pine where we could spend the night. Adrian had hitched to pick up his car 20 miles away, and we hoped that he would find us in Lone Pine. Eventually Adrian found us, eating in the only restaurant open in that kind of small western town. We stayed up until 3:30, again rehashing everything, occasionally wondering about the men. Not until we'd been asleep for an hour, at 4:30 a.m., did the all-night monitor reveal anything. Starting off in code, the voice over the radio told someone to call the coroner's office. One body had been found. They expected to find the other shortly. I heard the message, neither Johnnie nor Adrian did. I felt a fleeting sadness and went back to sleep, which typified my feelings. They weren't really how or where they were supposed to be.

I had known that the two men would die when I left them. In so many words I told them so. Now I knew they were dead. I had felt removed from them when I talked to them. At the same time their fate scared me, my mind couldn't cope. There were too many voices, unconnected, too many trains of thought, all at once. The fact they were in such trouble eventually only made me focus more on my own. They seemed equally removed when I heard for a fact they were dead, which is odd, since I have as clear a picture of them standing there, witless, as I do of anything else I've ever seen. I even tried in detached curiosity to imagine how they were found--frozen, in one sleeping bag--and even those thoughts didn't affect me the way I would have expected them to.

I like to think there is a reason for that, that it isn't my mind in its own fashion censoring out something unpleasant which will one day surface to haunt me. I like to think that it has adjusted successfully--since that day I've often dreamt not unpleasant dreams about blizzards and death--and has been affected in a positive way--with a shift in my values and view of life.

It is still hard not to wonder why it happened the way it did--why I lived and they died, why I didn't lose my fingers or toes, why I survived unscathed. I'm not sure I don't want to believe there is a meaning behind it all, but questioning what that meaning is can be dangerous. It is frighteningly easy to see how people can come to believe they have a mission in life or are chosen. It is something I have to fight, because I didn't gain what the two men lost.

AT THE SAME time their death isn't tormenting me, my life didn't bother them. I know it didn't. Hypothermia, in many respects, is a gracious killer. At the point we left the men they no longer cared. Soon they wouldn't realize what was happening, let alone remember me and the fact I could get away while they couldn't. Nor would they remember the only thing I later learned about them--that they were father and son--which like everything else that happened that day was a mixed blessing.