It all began the night I saw Donny and Marie Osmond on CNN. The famous sibling entertainers were on Larry King Live, plugging their show in Las Vegas. Let's all pause here for some derisive snickering while I make an embarrassing admission—I've been a Donny Osmond fan since I was 11. I wanted to see the show. I ran the idea past my husband.
 
"How would you like to go with me to see Donny Osmond?" I asked him.
 
His exact response, and I quote, was "I'd rather have a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."  
 
OK. Fair enough. The thought of going alone was appealing, actually. I never get to be alone, and the solitude would be rejuvenating.
 
As the idea began to gel, I had another wild idea. I've never seen Utah or Wyoming. I could fly down but then rent a car and drive back. Then, as long as I would be in the neighborhood, I thought about how much fun it would be to see our NCFR members at Brigham Young University (BYU) on the way back. I could see the country and have some adventure!

Be careful what you wish for.

Donny and Marie were sensational. I got a seat right up next to the stage with three other 40-something women; two CPA sisters named Carissa and Karen and also a homemaker named Teruka from Japan. The audience was filled with hundreds of ex-teenyboppers like me. If some demographer wanted to study a group of peri-menopausal middle class white women, this was a perfect convenience population.

Donny sang the songs we grew up hearing; we all squealed like sixth graders. I left very impressed with Marie as well. From her Dancing with the Stars experience, she has become a fabulous dancer. From about three feet away, I could see her shoes in clear detail. She does all of her footwork balanced on 4-inch heels that come to a point about the diameter of a pencil eraser. I tried to imagine even standing up in heels like that. Better not, I thought. With a quick computation using the physics of "pounds per square inch," I know I would be punching holes in solid concrete.

Donny, Me and Marie
 
The next day I spent driving to the Provo area; I had a dinner date with Alan and Lisa Hawkins that evening and then with Jeff and Tammy Hill the next night. I visited the campus the day in between and had a pizza lunch with the faculty and met wonderful and interesting people such as Stephen Covey of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" fame. Tuesday morning I was off to see Salt Lake City briefly, and then I planned to take I-80 east through Wyoming and back home to Minneapolis. I had no idea how quickly my journey was going to change.
 
Driving through the mountains in Utah was awe-inspiring. The weather was sunny and so were my spirits. Just as I crossed over the Wyoming state line, it started to snow a few gentle flakes. It looked as if I were driving right into a postcard. Within 15 minutes, however, I was battling terror like I'd never seen. The gentle snow went from postcard pretty to blinding blizzard. 
 
As a native Minnesotan, I am no weather wuss. I can handle anything Minneapolis can dish out. I've been caught in white-out conditions before, but I have my winter survival kit and the knowledge of local terrain. Driving in a mountain blizzard is something altogether new. In high elevations, there are new variables to deal with that we don't have in Minnesota. In the mountains, even through it was snowing heavily, we were up in the clouds so that sunlight was peeking through. This made the vista just blindingly white. It's the only time in my life when I've driven through a blizzard with my sunglasses on.
 
The worst part of mountain driving, however, is that I quickly found out that I don't have an inner gyroscope. Using the hills and valleys as reference points, I became disoriented quickly. The visual cues from the surrounding topography were playing tricks on me. When I thought I was ascending a hill, I often was headed down and needed to brake. When I thought I was going downhill, I could hear the car's automatic transmission kick into low gear, indicating I was climbing. I remembered my husband telling me that this type of disorientation is the frequent cause of air crashes: pilots ignore their instrumentation and navigate by appearances. I resolved to listen to the transmission and my ear tachometer-they wouldn't lie.
 
The white nightmare swirled around me. There were no lines in the pavement-it was snowpacked and beginning to ice-over. The cars around me crept along at 20 mph. I followed the taillights of a black Cadillac-another challenge.  Winter driving advice tells us to "allow lots of distance between you and the car ahead."  This wasn't possible. If I got too far behind, I lost sight of the Cadillac, and it was my only guide. I couldn't stop either. I was in a white car-any sudden movement could endanger everyone behind me in a chain reaction.
 
My worst enemy was fear which, in my case, was fed by family history. My great, great grandmother froze to death in 1924. I'd discovered the news story about her when researching my family history. Worse yet, I've read an account of the Donner Party (non-fiction) and the Jack London short story To Build a Fire (fiction). Sorry if this is a spoiler for anyone, but both stories end badly. So there I was; well-read on fatal hypothermia in three different genres.

My great, great grandmother's fate—1924

Suddenly, I saw the Cadillac signal right, and an off-ramp appeared out of nowhere.  I followed. At the end of the exit, I could see a truck stop. I needed gas, so I pulled up to a pump. As I opened my door, the fierce wind blew my credit card right out of my hand. I had to get down on my knees to feel around for it in the snow with my bare hands.
 
The truck stop was full of frightened travelers. I found out that I was in Fort Bridger, Wyoming. It was early afternoon. I put in a call to Alan Hawkins back at BYU. Alan picked up the phone to hear a tearful friend blurt out her predicament. Since I was only about 100 miles away, he was pretty sure he could place some calls to his church leadership who could locate a family in the area who would take me in for the night. He said he'd get to work on it and get back to me. I started conversations with a few truckers and asked for advice. One guy had 15 years of over-the-road trucking experience, and he'd pulled over. He had come from the other direction and told me there was a multi-car pile-up just ahead of where I would've driven. He had briefly entertained the idea of putting on his tire chains and pushing on, but he decided it was just too hazardous.  
 
Cigarette smoke was setting off my asthma, so I went back to the car to try to hear a weather update on the radio. I had been listening to the radio about a half hour, running the engine for heat. Suddenly I became nauseated and dizzy-carbon monoxide, I thought in an instant. I shut off the engine, got out into the piercing wind and went to the back of the car to make sure the tailpipe was clear-it was. Maybe it was just nerves, I thought. I dashed back to the truck stop for a cup of tea. In about 20 minutes, my head cleared and I noodled-out what had happened. The 50 mph wind gusts were blowing against the back of my car-the wind had obviously been forcing the exhaust back up the tailpipe into the passenger compartment.
 
Within just a few minutes, my cell phone rang. It was the regional Bishop, who lived just 10 miles away in Lyman, Wyoming. He was coming to get me.
 
I tried to envision what a Mormon Bishop would look like; a long flowing robe, a clerical collar and a mitre-style hat came to mind. Bishop Milu Walker looked like Walker, Texas Ranger!-a cowboy from central casting. He said he'd found me a room at a motel in his hometown. He said if we drove slow, I'd be OK as I followed him. This secondary road was in worse shape than the interstate. I followed Bishop Walker at 15 mph for 10 miles on two inches of glare ice. I remember thinking that I wish Avis® rented Zambonis®. About halfway, I saw a double wheel lying in the middle of the road. Then I looked to the shoulder, and there was a truck that was listing to port. Its bare axle was resting on the pavement. He had obviously fishtailed with such force, that his dual wheels had flown right off the axle. I always wondered why towns out in the wilderness had funny names like "Broken Axle." Now I know.
 
Soon we arrived at the motel. The Bishop began to speak to the innkeeper with instant rapport-they were obviously friends. I pulled out my wallet and asked if she'd like a credit card.
 
"No need for that." the Bishop told me. "It's all taken care of."
 
"I can't have you pay for my room on top of all this inconvenience," I countered.
 
He wouldn't hear of it. "That's not how we do things out here," he insisted.
 
I smiled and told him I was a Methodist and asked if that mattered. He gave me a warm chuckle and then, in an instant, he was gone. I suspect he was headed back out to rescue the fellow with the broken axle.
 
The motel was a classic 50s era motel, and laid out in strip mall fashion. My room was right out of a retro movie. It had shag carpeting, a TV that got only one station, a heater on the wall, a big cast iron bathtub and a double bed with a dent in the middle of the mattress-in other words, to my eyes, it was the Waldorf Astoria. It was clean, warm and wonderfully familiar to distant memories of rural Minnesota. More luck still-the dent in the bed fit my bottom perfectly. The rest of my trip home was mercifully uneventful.
 
This essay ends with a few realizations. When Alan Hawkins mobilized church directories and found help for me, I was seeing the power of social networks and the strong culture of hospitality in the area. Truck stops allow travelers to "loiter" in their buildings all night if necessary. Out there, turning someone out to the elements maybe doesn't qualify as murder, but it's a close second. The hospitality of the church culture would go one better. They didn't leave a woman alone in a truck stop overnight if they could help it.
 
Rescue comes from the most unexpected places, and here I'm not just talking about Mormon Bishops. In last December's issue of NCFR Report, I wrote my column about the horror of growing up with a violent father. I've spent most of my life trying to undo his damage. What I didn't write about him is that he had one redeeming trait-he was a gifted auto mechanic. His customers thought it was spooky, but he could "hear" a car communicate its problem on a 10 minute test drive. I grew up listening to him "think out loud" in cars, diagnosing problems. It was from him I learned about paying attention to all of a car's systems and the messages they send. I had it drilled into me that nausea in a running car was danger. Ironically, the point of my greatest peril was the carbon monoxide incident. I was parked at a truck stop, safely off the highway. I was lulled into a false sense of security. It was the influence of my father-dead 19 years and resented for even more-that allowed me to deduce why the exhaust system was backing up.  
 
As a result of that column on child abuse, I got many touching emails from NCFR members. One, however, stood out in my mind for its gentle way of telling me that she hoped that someday I would find something good that remained. I have. I learned to drive on an old pickup with a "three on the tree" transmission. All these years, I've known how to use jumper cables and how to change my oil. I know to clean my battery terminals with baking soda and how to tell when my brake calipers are dragging. All taken for granted. Now I realize how empowering this knowledge is for a woman.  
 
It would mean a lot to me if I could pass along one of my dad's tips to my readers. I learned from Dad that I should park my car in the same spot every day when I go to work. Then, when I leave to go home, I can glance at the pavement when I pull out to see if there are any fluid leaks that have appeared. If so, I know they are from my car.  
 
Now this last tip is from me. If you'll be winter driving over the mountains in a rental, ask for a Zamboni® --and make sure it isn't white. Then, before you leave the rental counter, make sure you ask for a directory of Mormon Bishops.

Epilogue

I gratefully acknowledge all of the gracious people who either put me up--or put up with me--on my trip; the BYU School of Family Life and its wonderful faculty, Professors Alan Hawkins and Jeffrey Hill and their families, and most especially, Bishop Milu Walker.
 
After I returned safely to Minneapolis, BYU Professor David Dollahite sent me a hymn, written by himself and a colleague. The hymn talks about faith and bringing one to the "journey's end."  Thank you, David, for telling me in this celestial way, "I'm happy you made it home."   Please enjoy this moving hymn with me.