I struggled with the door for a moment before sliding it open. The air I stepped into made me gasp. My eyes watered, cheeks tingled and my breath made clouds of vapour. San Francisco had been chilly but this was real cold. I had on only a thin cotton dress, a woollen jacket and a pair of nylon stockings, and the cold made me feel small inside my clothes. I looked out over the railing between the two cars and blinked for a moment. On either side of me mountains and rocks stretched towards the sky, which was only visible as a crisp ribbon dotted with stars. There was something light, almost glowing, on the ground and the stones, and I gasped when I realised what it was. My first glimpse of snow. It was white-blue in the moonlight, sparkling on the rocky landscape, making the ground glitter as the stars did. My teeth chattered and I grasped the next door and slid it open, the warm air of the carriage meeting me like a strange embrace. I might as well have been on the moon, it was all so different. I hurried through the second carriage, steeling myself for the icy air beyond, for the blast of night and cold. I wasn’t going to pause this time, but perhaps the engineer saw some wildlife on the tracks, deer or even a bear. The train let off its high, piercing whistle again and the sound carried on, lingering and mournful, echoing through the valley and bouncing off cliff walls. It was the eeriest sound I’d ever heard, that whistle, on its own in a valley of mountainside and granite, ice and snow. I wanted to gather it and place it against my chest, to warm it. But it belonged in this narrow, hollow place.