You cannot sit watching the pines thicken with snow, or stand in the middle of a frozen lake watching the stars Iike kernels of frost forming in the frigid depths of the sky, if you care about being cold. You cannot see the sun burn­ing gloves of frost off the pine needles as it rises in a January sky, or understand the slow perpetual motion of the deer when even the brown pine needles are slivers of ice, unless you have developed an indifference to cold.

We wanted to see those things.

Stalking Wolf made the cold a rite of passage. He, Rick and I were camped at the Good Medicine Cab­in. Christmas had come and gone, and we had watched him deliver his New Year’s prayer to the woods and to the spirit-that-moves-in-all­things. The weather was cold, but we had felt the warm, circling air go by us earlier and we knew that a snowstorm was coming. We did not know it was going to be a bliz­zard. I believe Stalking Wolf did.

We waited for the stories, nudg­ing him with questions, but he was silent, as if listening to counsel we could not hear. Unwordable things seemed to be going on inside him, and when he spoke, his hand tried to articulate them. “This is a new year,” he said, and the hand level­led the days the old year had knock­ed down. “You have done many things well.” The hand danced our triumphs. “But there arc things still to be done.” The hand took up our destinies and held them, waiting for time to strike a balance. “Give me your clothes.”

I stood as quickly as Rick and began to take off my jacket. The hand went to sit ceremoniously in Stalking Wolf’s lap. I pulled off the jacket and laid it at his feet. He did not smile. I took off the sweater as well. He did not move, and the hand did not rise to stop us. I took off my flannel shirt. The wind drew up close and ran its hands over my back. I shivered involuntarily. Stalk­ing Wolf waited. I slid down my trousers and stood before him in my underwear.

The ritual motion of Stalking Wolf’s hands as he folded our clothes neatly and stood with them made me feel suddenly very solemn, as if something important was about to happen—one of those things that so change your life that the rest of it is for ever different in some important way.

Stalking Wolf reached into his bag and handed us each a pair of short, cut-off jeans. He allowed us to keep our sneakers. When we had put on the jeans, he nodded and we sat down.

“The Cold Wind is your broth­er,” he said. “You have treated him as your enemy.” The hand rose in our defence. “If you go home in this fashion, you will never feel his bite again.” The hand gave us its protection against our weakness.

Stalking Wolf opened the door, and the Cold Wind poked his head in. The snow curled and settled to the floor like leaves. I watched it shave its gentle curves out of the air, touch the floor and disappear. The flakes were large and falling thick­ly. I could see them coming down incessantly against the night. Stalk­ing Wolf went out, shut the door and was gone.

Rick and I waited until he would have been well on his way, and then stepped outside into the snow. The sheer beauty of it made us warm, and we set off along the trail as if it were spring and walking home was as easy as staying where we were. But the Cold Wind met us on the trail where we least expected him and we soon began to shiver. There was still a long walk ahead of us, and the thickening snow was paint­ing the deer trails and the dog runs white, like pathways between the darker masses of the trees. Before the half-way point I had begun to feel truly cold.

My body shivered without restraint. My capacity for cold seemed to lessen with each step. Within 15 minutes, my teeth began to chatter. We were still eight miles from Stalking Wolf’s house, yet the Cold Wind kept telling rue to lie down and rest. I wanted to speak to Rick, but my voice would not work.

There seemed no way I could go on. The snow was up over the top of my sneakers. Every step seemed to form me in ice and break me loose to take the next step. If we had come that far lost and afraid, we would have died. But we were on an adventure Stalking Wolf had planned for us. I thought about what he had always told us, that nature could not hurt us if we were at one with it, and I stopped resist­ing the cold. The result was instan­taneous. The Cold Wind seemed to laugh through the pines, shaking down snow in his passage. My cold­ness was gone.

We quickened our pace, anxious to get home and tell Stalking Wolf what had happened. We were run­ning by the time we reached Stalk­ing Wolf’s house, and laughing and scooping up huge handfuls of snow and throwing them at each other. The wind died for a while, and we ran through the break in the storm towards Stalking Wolf’s house. When we stepped inside, the house seemed uncomfortably hot. Stalk­ing Wolf met us smiling, and gave us back our clothes. I have not been truly cold since.