The icy wind blowing around my hands and face was extremely cold. Needle-shaped ice crystals found their way into every infinitesimal gap in my thin fleece jacket and froze on my chest. The sensations in my ears and feet had long since stopped. A dull pain had settled into my extremities. At first the numbness had been a welcome relief, but now I longed to be able to use my hands as I struggled to open the door I'd spent hours searching for. Warm light shone from the windows of a friendly house a few hundred yards beyond, though I couldn't see it through the snow. My useless fingers pushed and scraped at the latch again and again, but the unyielding steel had been immobilized by layers of ice. Beneath me, my legs collapsed in exhaustion and defeat. I leaned against the fence and let the relentless snow begin to bury me. I felt like I had been wandering in this frozen purgatory forever. The kiss of the summer sun on my face and the joy in my mother's smile were but brief memories, quickly extinguished by the endless expanse of the clouds....