Lone Ranger

       My father was a professional rescuer, taking teams up on the mountains. He watched that not a single girl or boy got killed. Once, he took our team of teenagers up on Konzhakovski Kamen, the highest peak in the Northern Urals. The snow was seven feet high, but you notice it only when taking your skis off: the snow immediately swallows you.

       It is such a pleasure to get on the well-pressed ski trails and glide forward. The crisp wind pokes my red face with sharp frozen snowflakes. The skin feels drier and drier with each extra kilometer. All signs of sunburn are there on my face, while the temperature is around ten with a huge minus in front of it on the Fahrenheit scale. My lips are white from thirst, and I bend down but do not slow down to grab a ball of snow to cool my inflamed mouth. My father passed me on the right and cut me off. I had to stop, breathing steam and joy out of my lungs.

       “Lida, what are you doing?! Look at me, I am a strong man, but even I do not attempt to lead the team all the time. Did you not notice that from time to time I get at the tail of the group, and it allows me to recover from the cold and the wind before I lead again? You are the only one who pushes and pushes for the last few hours. All the boys are behind you, if you didn’t notice.” My father was an experienced skier. No, I didn’t notice anything. I was ecstatic, rushing through virgin piles of snow without even knowing where I was going. I didn’t even have a compass with me; neither did I bother to learn to read maps. I naturally followed my intuition, knowing well that my father was somewhere behind me, letting me lead.

       “When you cut yourself off from the group, you should know that a cougar waits up on a tree and attacks the loner, not a group. It is safer with the group!”

       “I’m watching my back, do not worry, Papa!”

I was so determined to see everything first, to experience everything first. I had no fear. I also knew that, regardless what each team member wanted, there was only one way to get forward: following the leader.

       Mysteriously, I was not attacked by cougars, nor was I frozen on the snow. Little did I know that I survived only because of my father’s constant watching over me from afar.