Winter soon came, and the days grew ever shorter, then finally vanished altogether. A thick blanket of snow covered the tundra in white, although it was not as much snow as Rose had originally expected. The tundra was a dry land. Still, as the winter wore on, a thick blanket of snow piled itself around the sod house, providing additional insulation from the bitter cold outside.
They were totally isolated from the rest of the world. The storms and the bitter cold kept other travelers away, and they were so far from the nearest town that they could not easily visit it. The endless night made the passage of time difficult to calculate, but they estimated the time of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year, and celebrated them when they thought the time was right.
Oftentimes, storms blew across the vast, trackless tundra, and Robert and Rose spent the hours huddled inside their sod house, protected from the elements by the thick blocks of earth and the blanket of snow that covered the cave-like building. Tripper stayed inside with them, lying across the doorway and guarding them against any threats.
There was a sense of peace, of safety, in the isolation of the wilderness that Rose had never known in the cities, and, after a time, she realized that the past seldom haunted her thoughts anymore. Occasionally, some memory would stir, but for the most part, she lived for each moment, savoring being alive.
While the storms blew, the Calverts stayed inside, seldom venturing out unless absolutely necessary, and passed the long hours talking, sleeping, and making love. Rose taught herself to sew the skins and furs of the animals that Robert had hunted, and when he expressed boredom, taught him to do the same.
Despite the perpetual darkness of the Arctic winter, when the weather was clear the Calverts were often to be found outside, hunting the open tundra, ice fishing, and even breaking up the ice at the edges of the river and chipping at the frozen sand, searching for bits of gold. Rose still refused to hunt, but she often followed Robert on his forays, staying back while he and the dog moved in on their prey, and helping to butcher the game and transport it back if they were successful. Game was harder to find in the winter, but animals did still roam the tundra, and the occasional hunting trip took the edge off the boredom that came with spending long hours inside with little to do.
Ice fishing provided another interesting diversion. They had little need for the food—they had supplied themselves well—but the occasional fresh fish was welcome, and Rose found that she enjoyed ice fishing, though she could never quite forget Jack’s story about falling through thin ice as a boy living in Chippewa Falls. Neither Rose nor Robert was particularly familiar with ice fishing, but they eventually figured it out after a number of mistakes. The first lesson that they learned was that it was easiest to return to the same place to fish each time, since that meant that there was less ice to be broken through. They also learned that the bait that they used—bits of leftover meat—froze solid unless kept submerged in water. The hooks had to be baited while the meat was in the bucket of water, or it would freeze and be impossible to place on the hook, either bending the hook out of shape or splitting and shattering from the cold. Rose hated removing her mittens and dipping her fingers into the cold bucket of water—kept liquid by being set in a pan with hot coals in it—but it was the only way to bait a hook. Even then, the bait sometimes split and froze on the hook, and had to be resubmerged or thrown away.
Nevertheless, they spent countless hours out on the ice, under the stars and moon, fishing, walking, and taking the opportunity to cross the frozen river and explore the land on the other side. The hours of the long, cold Alaskan winter passed peacefully.
Rose had found a new joy in life, a feeling of peace that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She could almost forget the problems of life, and of the world. Life was good.
And so, when disaster struck yet again, it was even harder to endure.