Life in a Marshmallow

My supervisors will say, "Welcome to Paradise!" when you walk in through the front doors of the lodge where I work. It's thirty-four degrees and snowing with snow drifts surrounding like canyon walls, reaching from ten to thirty feet tall. To me, that's hardly "Paradise." It is more like living in a floating marshmallow, somewhere in a cloud. It's cold up here in a cloud and everything is white. We are like ants that carve tunnels to get from point A to point B. The peak of Mt Rainier scrapes a hole in the sky as weather systems pass by, resulting in near constant rain or snow.

 

For the past month, the workers have been snow-blowing the snow off the roads and piling it up. The pathways dug between buildings are like silent vacuums, absent of all sound. To tell a warm day from a cold one, all you have to do is listen.  If it is a warm day, the sound of rushing water is everywhere as is runs out from the snow walls and spills into the parking lots, roads, and pathways. I was taught in geology class that the earth is made up of the core, the mantle, and the crust but geologists forgot to mention the layer of snow the encapsulates the earth surrounding Mt. Rainier.

The peak- being 9,000 feet above our lodge- holds immeasurable amounts of snow for melting. Many claim this is the snow capitol of world and, this year it almost reached the highest level of snowfall on record, so the amount of snow is no joke.

I went for a snowshoe hike outside of the dorm and it consisted of climbing a wall of snow till I was standing a snowbank that was taller than the two-story building next to me. 

I wake up in the morning confused as to what time it is because my window is completely blocked from the light of day by snow.

When I do arrive at work, I spend a surprising amount my time catching mountain critters that try and escape the snow outside. I can't blame them. In three days of work, I caught a bird in the stairwell and a chipmunk in the hallway. There are four foxes that walk up to people in the parking lot and beg for food. Two ravens provide entertainment by dog-fighting in the sky and then dropping out of the sky like stones on tourists and their improperly disposed garbage. In the dorms, there are ghost mice who we do not see or hear, but we know they are there. They steal our food no matter if it is lying uncovered on the ground or hanging inside a backpack and wrapped in plastic.

The mountain is an active volcano. I originally thought it was dormant but it releases large amounts of steam, heat, and sulfuric gases resulting in melted tunnels and ravines buried in the snow, hidden from climbers. Ever year people fall in and never come out.

Maybe this place isn't anything like living in a floating marshmallow in a cloud. It is a harsh and dangerous chunk of wilderness. If the hidden ravines don't get you, the mountain lions, hypothermia, frost bite, and blinding blizzard conditions will.

This area was originally called Paradise by the first Europeans that sought a place to get away from the city but, in the month of May, it is surely not worthy of its name.