Cold Mountain

I grew up in Maine. I know from snow. I know to look out for black ice on the roads in winter. And I know how to handle a car in storm conditions: to turn the wheel into a spin; to flip the transmission into neutral if you feel yourself loosing control . . . or so I thought.



Driving home from our desert adventure, Amanda and I took a two hundred kilometer detour to see the red rock formations of the Dades Gorge before heading back to Marrakech. She shot off a couple of rolls of 120-milimeter film amidst the Mars-like outcroppings and we hit the road. Big deal, we figured, as long as we had Marrakech in our sights by dark, we’d be in fine shape to return the rental car on time. We might even, if we drove fast enough, miss the Friday night traffic heading into the city.



Unfortunately, speed turned out to be an issue as we entered the opening twists of the Tizi-n-Tichka pass. I’d just passed an ancient, black smoke-belching Honda truck (along with four other cars, mind you), when I was waved down by a police roadblock. I’m ashamed to say it was my second of the journey; I’d blown by a stop sign near Tamegroute two days earlier and had gotten off with a stern warning. Though a speed gun was not in evidence and I wondered why it was that the two cars before me had been blithely waved on by the gendarmes, I grudgingly pulled onto the gravely shoulder. The officer approached our car with the universal police swagger and demanded my papers. My driver’s license, it turns out, had expired a few months ago, something we discovered when we rented the car, so Amanda, ever quick on her feet, handed me hers, which I passed off as my own. I can’t deny a certain amusement in playing on the ethnic stereotyping that I normally find so frustrating, e.g., that every Westerner looks the same to Moroccans. Despite Amanda’s blue eyes and long blond hair, the officer didn’t bat an eye at my fake ID. He was too intent on turning a profit. “Vitesse excessive,” admonished the cop, demanding a 400-dirham fine, though we weren’t presented with any ticket. Not only did he want money, he was keen on knowing what I do for work in Marrakech. “Nothing,” I reasoned, might come off as a bit cheeky, not to mention embarrassingly banal, so after much pressing, I told him I was a writer. “Oh,” he said, as if I might name a book title that shared space on his bookshelf at home with the Koran. “But I’m not published, and nothing I write is any good,” I explained. Never has the sad truth served me so well. The fellow, his face awash in pity, actually returned 300 of the 400 dirhams. I think he muttered something about getting myself a few classes, but I can’t be sure.



Amanda and I were so excited that the license ruse had worked and that we’d been returned three-quarters of our fine, we raced up the pass on an adrenaline high. I ought to have clued into potential problems when Sam, who’d phoned earlier in the day from Marrakech, said that it was rainy and cold in the city. But no, it wasn’t until we rounded a bend and noticed a spectacular rainbow peeking out from dark clouds that had descended over the top of the pass like a shroud. Snowflakes soon followed, and then the flakes turned into a flurry, which swept itself into a full-blown blizzard. Visibility shrank to 20 feet as we ticked off kilometers (80 left on the pass!) in hushed, worried voices. At least we had company. The road was clogged with 4x4s returning from real desert adventures, as well as the ubiquitous Honda trucks laden with people and a few old Renaults that looked as if the traversing the pass would present a challenge even in the best of conditions. At a certain point, my nerves just couldn’t take it any more. Even though we could no longer see the precipitous drops on either side of the road, I knew they were there and couldn’t fight the image of us careening off the side and into the void. I don’t want to do a Thelma and Louise, I thought. No, I wanted desperately to click my ruby heels together and get outa Oz.


Amanda, sensing my distress and probably fearing for her own life, decided it was time to switch drivers. We pulled into a café at the top of the pass and hurriedly switched seats, but not before we were each covered in sleet. As we were pulling out, several policemen in a Land Cruiser (with chains on its wheels!) pulled up beside us. “Do you think we’ll make it down in this car?” we asked. “Practically,” was their discomforting reply. “Practically,” we repeated, looking at each other in terror. But our options were continue on down the side of the mountain, or turn around and face the same descent on the opposite side. We forged ahead. And the policemen allowed just a few cars to follow us before closing the pass.

With the car in second, we slunk down the route at first 30 and then 20 and finally 10 kilometers per hour. In an effort to keep our nerves under control, Amanda chatted and I took pictures, lots and lots of pictures. There were moments of glee, like when a flock of seagulls burst in front of the car as if they’d been blown in from the Atlantic with the storm. Their whiteness was difficult to discern amidst the snow until their wings were nearly dusting our car. And moments of panic. After clearing the snowline, we drove for several kilometers on a clean road, marveling at the red of the valley set off by evergreens, only to notice seconds later that the road twisted back up into another series of hairpin turns above the snowline. Our reprieve would be brief.





An hour and a half later, we’d made it over the second snow-covered pass, Amanda’s legs and arms tight from pumping the brakes and clutching the wheel. As we once again hit bare road, we felt an enormous surge of exhilaration. Nature, when she gets herself worked up, can be magnificent and it was glorious (in retrospect) to be overcome with a fear, a joyful powerless panic, and a measure of awe.