Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight

by Mathew Joseph Holt

There nothing was to be seen except snow and scenery and soldiers and guns and snow dogs.

The Mt. Adamello snow or sled dogs are a cross between the Canadian and Russian husky, big, white, woolly, impressive war veterans, snarling and snapping at one another and their keepers, barking little, knowing that silence is salvation. White and hard to see, they are sent between lines into territory where nothing living and seen can live.

These dogs are allowed half the rations of a soldier; are marked with indelible ink on the pink skin inside the ear; and a pair, with apparent ease, draw a sled load of three hundred pounds.

It would be hard to picture John's loneliness that winter. Though the officers and soldiers were most kind, he did not speak Italian and none of the officers in the mess to which he was assigned spoke English. At first he could not ask for a piece of bread; but the service was excellent and his wants were anticipated. Bearing in mind their example and kindness, he made up his mind always to be kind to any foreigner he might meet when he returned home.

He longed for someone to talk with; and when his work was done he would walk out upon the mountain side in the bright winter sunlight of those great heights and hold an imaginary conversation with his wife or little son, and come home whistling and happy.

There were no books to read. He was left alone with his thoughts which, though sometimes sad and lonely, were never unhappy ones. These six months of silence and thought changed his disposition. He grew older in spirit. He acquired a habit of silence he never outgrew; of introspective reflection, such as the old have who sit silently in the chimney corner.

In early March, he received word of the death of his mother. He was not surprised, and, though he loved her very much, was not overly grieved by it. She had led a useful, unselfish, happy life; she was old and for several years had been losing her vitality without apparent pain. Her life had been a peaceful one; she expected the peace of the righteous after death; she believed those of her family she left behind would be happy. John looked upon her going as a vanishing from sight merely. She seemed in an adjoining room or near place; a little too far away to see or hear, but near enough to feel her presence and love.

Just when it seemed that winter was the perpetual season, when his fingers were swollen and discolored by the cold and he had forgotten how it felt to be warm unless in bed or shoveling snow, the valley below took on emerald tints and the snow line crept up the mountain.

Then John thought, "the hill country will be fine this summer;" but he was told to come out of his dolomite burrow and dwell in a tent with the Arabs in Tripolitania for the summer. A place so near the equator that his shadow at noon was hid by a none too prominent stomach; where the thermometer feels comfortable and perfectly at home at 130 in the shade and where the snow dogs of his winter home were replaced by the camel, the only reliable conveyance in the summer.

The Bedouin, the Tuaregs and some of the blacks, ride the camel with ease and dignity; but an Englishman, Italian or American on a camel looks and feels wholly out of place, and at the end of a day's journey is an object of pity and a subject for soothing lotions.