GROUND BLIZZARDS

My Colorado childhood never prepared me for Wyoming ground blizzards. I now know that these swirling foot‑high white-outs will appear regardless of weather conditions or my expectations. The road vanishes in seething snow. It billows in foggy swirls. Just as photons are neither particles nor waves but something more and less than both, the ground blizzard is neither snowflakes nor air. It obeys its own laws of motion. Driving through one for the first time, I was dazzled.

The Sybille Canyon road was the logical choice on our return from the coldest weekend of my life in Gillette; and it was after we left the interstate, winding through the canyon on an insubstantial cloud, I listened to my boyfriend talk and realized what a poor road I had chosen.

All the way from Gillette, he explained the psychological underpinnings that justified the pompous ass he had become. Why he thought it was funny people called him that. Why he believed that his compulsive cleaning, while perhaps obsessive, at least resulted in a more orderly home than mine. How my youthful tendency to discuss problems between us only generated arguments. Why blow jobs were mandatory. But what I remember most is me, chilled to the bone, and a moment of wonder at the ground blizzard.

AWe could be flying, the road could be gone and we would never know,@ I marveled.

ADon't be silly. Of course I would know if we were off the shoulder.@

ABut to look at it, you can't know. The sun is shining, it's not snowing, but the road has vanished. It's wonderful.@

At that moment I realized, with that barely audible pop of a soap bubble, that our relationship was over. Billowing downhill on the Brownian cushion, I savored my new knowledge that this man, the one I knew I would marry the moment I met him, was now out of my life.