REVELATION-final1

thought. But in the end I found a transporter van that left every morning at 9AM from Calais toBangor, where I could get on a Grey Hound bus. This meant I would have to kill four earlymorning hours, from 4 AM, when I intended to attempt my crossing, until 9AM, when the vanleft Calais. Finding a safe and unobtrusive place to stay off the street and out of sight of copswould be crucial to the success of my endeavor so I worked the phone and used local knowledgeto see if anything was open in Calais so early in the morning. Luckily, American capitalismnever sleeps and both McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts opened at 5 AM.With all problems solved, I granted myself a good meal and then waited for the night, hopingalso for early morning fog, which is a rather common occurrence in that coastal area. But the fogdid not come and, to make matters worse, the thermometer dropped to a bone-chilling -25degrees Celsius (-13 degrees Fahrenheit). Concerned, I went walking along the river in the lateevening to see if it froze and to my disappointment I found that ice boulders had formed thatflowed down the middle of the river. I nevertheless decided to attempt to cross.Before going to bed, I put everything I could not carry into my car and bid goodbye to my lastworldly possession that the government of Canada had not taken away from me, my MercedesML 430.The adrenaline kept me awake all night and at 4AM I started walking to my designated spot. Islipped down the bank and inflated my camping bed in the deadly silence. The river was stillriddled with ice boulders in the middle part. I placed my backpack at the front and gingerlykneeled in the middle so I could paddle with my hands on both sides. Then I pushed away fromthe steep shore and dunked my hands in the freezing water. Within seconds they were frozenstiff and insensate. Then, towards the middle of the river, my floating bed capsized as soon as ithit the first ice blocks and I fell in. My heart stopped for a few seconds when the freezing waterseeped through my heavy winter clothes and reached my skin. I gasped and struggled to stayafloat as the heavy garments and the current tried to pull me under. My boots came loose andboth sank to the bottom of the river, but after managing to gasp for air through the pain and fear Iset out towards the Canadian shore. Sheer will not physical strength helped me through the fiveminutes it took me to swim back to safety, all the while pushing my backpack ahead of me. Butonce I reached the steep embankment my hands were too frozen to grab onto the bushes thatoffered their branches. As I reached for them it felt as though my hands were sliced by knifesand I could not get a grip. I used my body to crawl and my teeth and hands and arms and will tosomehow get ahold of something and make it out of the river. And I did.Barefoot and drenched I crawled up the hill, my body convulsing with shivers and my teethchattering so hard I thought they would shatter. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds and hada hard time keeping my eyelids from freezing over my eyes. By the time I reached the B&B Iwas a walking icicle. I had left the door unlocked, just in case, and fumbled my way in and upthe stairs as quietly as I could. Once inside my room, I ran a bath, undressed and immersedmyself in the lukewarm water, which felt like a boiling cauldron of magma. But I bared the pain150