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The white comes from behind. It comes with wind and snow. Suddenly. Without warning. Only minutes ago, I could see the village. Miniature in the distance. A silhouette in the gray glow of noon. I strain to see through the swirling ice fog. Nothing. I spin around, heart pounding. Too late! I've come too far.

Now I'm completely lost and alone. I'm not prepared with a snow knife like Katak. Keep calm, I tell myself. Another voice inside my head is screaming in panic. "Danger! White-out! Emergency!" Which way to go? East? West? North? South? How should I know? I've never had a good sense of direction. There are no roads. No street signs. No landmarks here. Even my footprints are swept away.

Okay, Laurie Buckner, try not to panic. Stay calm. Get yourself oriented. Just figure out where in the world you are, and get yourself home! Okay, okay, keep calm and think! I'm on the river. I always walk here. This time though, I was practically running, putting the village as far behind me as possible. I hadn't noticed how the wind picked up. I'd been too upset. Pissed is more like it. Pissed with a capital P!

My heart sinks, a lead weight in the pit of my stomach. I feel like throwing up. Stupid me! I should know better. It's impossible to run away in the Arctic. It goes on and on forever.

Big Ed bellowed, "Get your butt back here, Laurie Buckner!" as I stomped past Mom. Slamming doors. I had to get away! From Big Ed and the tiny Eskimo village.

I've really blown it this time. I should have asked Katak to come along. As usual, Big Ed will get the last word. This is the Arctic, kiddo, he'll say. A person can freeze to death in minutes. Happens all the time.

I strike out in one direction and, after a few minutes, I am positive I'm going the wrong way. My breath steams, freezing instantly into ice crystals on my wool scarf. I try shouting, but there's no one to hear. There's so much land and hardly any people. I start to cry, then suddenly stop. Niiqsik says tears can freeze eyelids shut!

I change direction, and again I'm certain I'm going the wrong way. Walk anyway, I tell myself. Put one foot in front of the other and just start walking and keep right on walking. Standing still in a white-out is the worst possible thing to do. If I don't keep moving, I'll freeze to death like old Miowak who sat down on the ice to die. She wanted to die, of course, She wasn't fourteen years old like me with her whole life ahead of her. Move! Wiggle your fingers. Stay alive.

Katak and Niiqsik never get cold. They laugh when my teeth chatter. They were born with warm hands and flat noses. I pull the wool scarf, heavy with ice, across my face. The points of my cheeks pinch. My nose is numb, too. A hole in my face. Not a good sign. I'll have frostbite for sure. My eyelashes are coated with ice. I pull my parka-ruff close to my face. Eskimos have more than a hundred words for snow and another hundred words for ice formations. Nine months out of the year, this place is buried in snow or frozen in ice. The permafrost's so hard it took men weeks to dig a grave for old Miowak. They set lanterns on the ground and chipped away all night even though Miowak would have preferred being eaten by a bear. She told me so herself only a few days before she went out on the ice. She said her son or grandson would kill the bear and bring home enough meat for everyone in the village.

Katak and Niiqsik have lived here all their lives. They'd know the way home or they'd find a spot to sit and wait, their backs to the wind as they sing ancient songs. Okay, okay, keep calm. Think like an Eskimo. Think like Katak. If the wind was against my back walking downriver and away from the village, then I must walk with the wind at my face to get upriver and home. Right? I put my shoulder to the wind and plant one foot ahead of the other. I hold my parka hood with both hands to keep it from filling with snow.

I struggle home to Mom and Big Ed. It's the last place on earth I want to go. I just want to go home. Home to Oceanside, California. Only three blocks from the beach. It's all Big Ed's fault. We should never have come. He was wrong about a lot of things. He told me Eskimos rubbed noses together when they kiss. Not true. He said we might live in an igloo. Also not true. If I were home, I'd be listening to my real dad on K-O-R-B. He'd get me tickets to concerts and take me out sailing. I'd be going to ninth grade dances instead of freezing to death on a river above the Arctic Circle. Big Ed ruined my life.

Walk. Keep on walking.

After awhile, I know for an absolute fact I'm going the wrong direction. The wind has changed. It's coming from all sides, blowing sheets of white against me, tricking me again and again. The white's like my anger, both inside and outside, distorting all I see. I see shapes that vanish. Like a mirage on a desert. I'm dead. No, not dead! Tired. I'm tired of walking in circles and getting nowhere. I'll just sit down and rest a minute. Wait for the weather to improve. Wait for someone to come looking for me. Wait for Search and Rescue. After all, it's such an effort to lift my heavy boots. I try to wiggle my toes. They're numb inside my thermal socks. I heard about a guy who ate his toes to stay alive. He cut them off with a knife he had in his pocket. His toes were numb, of course. Like mine. And he couldn't feel a thing. He figured they'd have to be amputated anyway. They'd already turned black.

Okay, okay, rest a minute. Anyway, it's a relief not to be walking. Besides, Katak could be wrong. She's fifteen, but she can't know everything. I'd rather be a lump on the ice with white rolling over me instead of walking in circles. It's much easier this way. To let go...let go... to surrender...

"Do you notice how Eskimos accept their fate?" Mom asked as she was taking our frozen wash from the line and stacking it like cardboard against the school steps. "They're resolved, and they never complain." I suppose she was comparing them to Big Ed, who complains all the time. "They seem to shrug things off," she said. "They think they're either lucky or unlucky." She picked up the pile of stiff clothes and stood on the sloping school steps. "And theyíre willing to wait. Have you ever noticed how patient they are?"

I wait patiently on the frozen river. Like an Eskimo. I'm patient because I'm numb. Inside, I'm anxious to get home. Inside, I'm impatient. A voice in my head says, "Isn't this dangerous, Laurie Buckner? Shouldn't you be walking? Aren't you doing the exact wrong thing sitting down on the ice!" Hey, give me a minute. Only a minute. I just want to close my eyes and think things through. It seems silly to be sitting on a river in a white-out. There's salmon, char, and whitefish swimming under me. I've seen Noopa pull them out of holes in the ice. Last May, I watched the ice crack and break up. We had to be careful where we walked. Ekalun and Weyahok carried a small wooden boat between them in case the ice gave way underfoot. Finally, the ice broke into great bobbing chunks that floated downriver. It happened in one day. The ice clattered like glass. That was the odd part, the light musical sounds of the moving ice. Delicate. like windchimes. The sun shone even at midnight. Families piled into umiaks, frozen at shoreline since fall, and headed upriver. Men brought out outboard motors and all-terrain vehicles. Everyone rushed to get a supply of fish for the winter. Katak and Niiqsik went off to gather betties from the tundra. Soon Big Ed, Mom, and I were the only ones left in the village, three white people who didn't belong, not in the village, not in the fish camps, and certainly not in the Arctic. And school wasn't even out yet. Not officially.

We packed up and flew home to Oceanside. Big Ed bragged to everyone about living with the Eskimos. We went to movies, shopped in malls, ate in restaurants, drove on freeways, and watched television every chance we got. It was one big, long party with overeating and overbuying and staying up watching the late, late shows. I stayed with my real dad on his boat for a couple of days. He was real busy. I went to the K-O-R-B studio twice to watch him broadcast. I saw Grandma and Grandpa. They said they were worried about us being so far away and in such a cold place. They looked at our snapshots at least three times. I saw my friends, too. They talked about the eighth grade graduation dance I missed and musical groups I never heard of and movies I should have seen. They gossiped about popular girls and chattered about knobby kneed surfers. They criticized my clothes and freaked over my hair grown to my collar bones. I was faking it every minute. I was different. They were different. "Honestly, Laurie, what's happened to you?" they asked. "You've gotten so totally uncool."

Then Big Ed said it was time to go back, and Mom went shopping for homeschool materials for me, paperback novels for her, and thicker mittens for all of us. We bought jigsaw puzzles with more pieces, longer lasting flashlight batteries, and extra thick woolen hats and scarves from a catalog. Big Ed ordered a snowmobile, metal traps, guns, and ammunition. "I'm going to live off the land," he said. We made a grand entrance on our return. Big Ed stomped off the mail plane and announced to the Eskimos standing outside the trading post, "I'm here to prepare you people for the outside world." Not that any Inupiat Eskimo wanted to live anywhere but the Northwest Arctic.

Mom tried to point out how Eskimo families really love their children. They allow them to sleep or eat when they want, to play as they wish. "They're really remarkably well behaved considering," she said, but Big Ed stopped listening to Mom long ago.

It's okay to rest on the river and think how things were last summer. I'll just lie down a few seconds. Protected by steep river banks. Beyond the wind. Below the white. I can escape into dreams.

I dream of home. Waves on the beach, rolling upon the slick sand. I can hear the sound of the ocean, and it's comforting. I can feel the warm sun, and I'm happy. Dogs enter my dream, coming from the deep recesses in my mind, running on sand that shifts like dry snow. Dog Beach, it's called, where dogs are allowed to run without leashes. Yip, yip, yip! The yelping dogs come toward me, and I've never owned a dog in my life. I've never been to Dog Beach either. I only heard about it. Even in my sleep, I know I'm in danger. Still, I don't want to move from the luxurious warm sand. The sound gets closer, echoing in my ears. I think the dogs might run right over me. Closer and closer they come. I struggle to get out of the way. Then I hear the swoosh of sled runners.

With a jolt, I realize I'm not on Dog Beach! I'm on the river, trying to remember that I must force myself to get up and walk. The dogs are real! I can smell them. I can hear them stretch against their tethers as they vigorously shake themselves. I try to open my eyes, to move.

Then, even before my eyes are open, I'm aware of someone bending over me. There's a sound not like any voice I've ever heard. What's spoken is more a groan than a word. "Ugh!" or "Arrgh!" and then, "Unnnnuhhhh!"

I'm being roughly shaken. Prodded. moved about like some curiosity found on the beach. It takes all my strength to open my eyes. My eyelids stick as if glued. Am I still dreaming? I seem to be looking into a round, black hole. Well, not exactly a hole. Actually, it's an eye! An eye with a capital E! Huge. Moonshaped. It's deep inside a gigantic parka hood. An eye so big and frightening, I shut mine tight. The sight gives me the creeps. I'm shaking all over as I'm hauled to the sled. I resist, but I don't resist. I want to get off the river and there's no other way. "Uhhhuuug!" I'm rolled atop greasy canvas duffels and smelly animal skins. I'm treated like an old dead thing. Just tossed on the sled.

The vicious snarling dogs are right in front of me. There must be at least ten, maybe more. I could never outrun them, not in my half frozen condition in this whiteness, not when they're more wolf than dog. There's a throaty sound, a sharp command, more cry than word, "Hi...eee...ka!" and the sled jerks forward, the cross slats creaking beneath me and the heavy load. We soar into the skim-milk white over ridges of snow. I close my eyes against the sudden rush of cold.