The Night Watchman: Flying Over Snow Summary & Analysis

After the first snow, Patrice thinks that she’ll have to wait until spring to test Betty Pye’s information. She had decided on Wood Mountain because he is less “sticky” than Barnes. Patrice thinks of different possibilities and thinks maybe she and Wood Mountain could use the old, abandoned cabin up the hill from her house, the one Vera had worked on, hoping it might one day become her house. Patrice puts on long underwear, padded overalls, and two layers of wool socks and heads up the hill with a pair of snowshoes Zhaanat had made her. She sets snares leading up to Vera’s cabin. When she gets there, she thinks of Vera and wonders how she could have thought of using the cabin with Wood Mountain for “crude love.”

Patrice falls suddenly and then sits in the leaves. She takes off her snow shoes and then smells the unmistakable scent of a bear. She knows the bear is hibernating. She drifts off. When she wakes up, she feels so much stronger than before. And fearless.