How strong does the wind have to blow to knock a six-foot, one hundred fifty-five-pound person to their knees? Not once or twice, but over and over again? Cody was over-confident on the way up -- he hopped from rock to rock effortlessly, his low center of gravity kept him below the worst of the wind, his four feet on the ground balanced and braced him like a table. I was like a flagpole, awkward and unstable. We got two-thirds of the way up, to the shack, but didn't dare go any higher. (I didn't dare go any higher; I could tell Cody wanted to press on.) I dropped my pack on the wood-plank floor and immediately the at-least-twenty-pound-bag loaded with a night's worth of supplies rolled over three times, blown by a gust. The shack has eight windows, but no window panes; the roof is missing two planks. Every real-heavy gust, the shack's tow lines, weaved through the ceiling supports and anchored into the rock, bowed, making that eerie, creeking sound, like a guitar string pulled too tight, about to snap. The shack gently rocked, but achored structures aren't supposed to rock at all. Visitors carve their initials and the date into the floor, wall, ceiling. I found a 1978, thirty-one years ago -- if the shack had stood this long, it could stand one more windy night. Be tough, build character, only ten hours to sunrise, I told myself, verbally, like the Old Man and the Sea, but I was the Young Man and the Mountain. By 6:30, though the sun was still peaked in the sky, the windchill was so low that I was in my sleeping bag, all the clothes I had -- wool cap, three layers ankles to neck -- were on, yet I was wishing I had gloves (You won't need those, you wimp, I'd told myself hours earlier, leaving them on the kitchen table). The sun wasn't going down for another two hours -- it would get colder, probably much colder. Building a fire in the wind would be impossible -- and we were above treeline, anyway, nothing to burn. Cody looked nervous, his eyes were half sunk, his pupils huge. I tried to start my cooking stove, heat some soup, warm my soul. It wouldn't stay lit. Fight or flight, only nine hours to go ...

We started back down as the sun was beginning to set and got back to the car just before that dark when you need your headlamp. We slept in the car. The wind rocked all night. I drank enough wine and ate enough soup, New England clam chowder, to sleep heavily.