From the Tent

In my tent, I woke up feeling an intense pressure on my chest. A pressure that seemed to overtake my entire body. Half asleep, I realized that I could not move. That I was in a state of paralyzing fear and anxiety. In panic, I realized that an unknown force was pushing and weighing me down. Immobilized. I frantically tried to push myself up, and at that moment, I realized, through the glimmers of light from the moon, that the tent had been buried in the snow. Amazingly, the tent had not broken. The rods that were holding the top of the tent had been severe-ly bent, but not broken, by the weight of the snow. I began slowly to move toward the entrance of the tent to open the zippers. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally was able to crawl to the entrance and open the tent to escape my prison. I jumped out of the tent, looked back, and noticed that the tent had been engulfed by snow. Fatigued and breathing hard, I looked at the wilder-ness surrounding me. I had slept through a blizzard, and I could not recognize the world around me. The storm had dropped an immense amount of snow and everything in sight was completely white, creating a feeling of purity and peace. And for a moment, with the wind howling behind my head, it seemed like the whole world stood still, submerged in endless silence.