[ WP ] Most people can count themselves lucky if they get the chance to go on a single real adventure .

My dad called our small little shack Limbo. He said that here, the cold would ride on your chest and time would do the same, freeze in a thick white blanket of snow. My grandfather on the other hand would tell me that God was an artist, and that our world was his canvas. He said the purity of the snow was a lesson. Everything has an unspoken promise, and sometimes there just are n't lips to speak them. 
 
 To me the snow-capped peaks of these mountains were fingernails that were grasping for the sky. Our little valley was held between a giant ’ s hands. I imagined him lifting us high and away from civilization. His straining and heaving causing the winds and forcing the clouds to fall to the earth. However hopeless, he would push us closer and closer; until even he, could no longer reach. 
 
 I loved the savagery of the wild tundra but dad would always tell me every time we stepped outside, my life was the most precious thing I had. 
 
 `` Out there,'' he would say `` everything has been broken and if not, it ’ s out there to break you.'' 
 
 My grandfather would laugh, “ The river is only fierce, if you choose to swim ”. The smoke from his pipe would choke on the silence. 
 
 As a boy, I hated sitting in my house and preferred to be out with my father. I know the air as wolves, biting into my lungs and forcing me to cry. But I know the tears as my mother's falling fingers, warming my skin as it brushed past. Most people can count themselves lucky if they get the chance to go on a single real adventure. Every time I went out with my dad, it reminded me of her and of me. Today was no different, yet every day is different. 
 
 I lay on my stomach listening for quiet calls and the crunch of snow. It was my job to tell apart the sound of tired trees from that of tired deer. My father ’ s hand was heavy on my shoulder and he would whisper to me about my mother and him. The only time I ever heard about her. In my mind I would cast their images upon the shadows of the heaving snow. His hand would slide down my mother ’ s back, streams of water melting into the snow white folds of her dress. The river shifting as the water walked briskly past and the shades of blue painted fading pictures of my mother. Silhouettes I have almost forgotten. The trees waved the wind along signaling my welcome back into her embrace. There in the cold, I could feel her again. Far to my left a deer sang through the natural symphony I had orchestrated in my head. 
 
 I leveled my gun. This was n't my first time but the ebb and flow of my father ’ s lungs would always breathe a sense of uneasiness through me. My fingers cautiously slept on the trigger, fumbling slightly with the scope, I cleared my head. The deer looked beaten and defeated. We had tracked it for 3 hours, and I could see its exhaustion recited in the sway of sagging shoulders and slipping senses. I could feel its loss in my own heart. 
 
 The gun charged into my shoulder exploding into life, and just as suddenly it would extinguish it. The deer fell, and I could hear its death veiled behind a snow pack, falling from a tree. The stinging heat of the cold tore into my chest. My father ’ s voice was soft. “ Like I said son, if it ’ s not broken it ’ s out there to break you ”. 

