http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/snowboarder-cave-austria/

Powder burst to the left and right of her board. The easy cadence of her serpentine path schwiff schwiff schwiffed as Meri carved down the mountain. In the earpiece tucked inside her helmet, a low beep began to sound. She attacked a ridge with authority and launched off its edge. For a long moment, she soared on a cloud of flawless snow. Beneath her cold gear, she grinned from ear to ear.

She landed with a thump. With a deft twist of her hips, she pushed herself to a stop, her chest pointed back up the mountain. In her ear, the beep sounded insistently until she clicked the locator button. Looming above her, an ice cave yawned from the mountainside.

“Mark coordinates,” she said. After a moment, her earpiece dinged a confirmation. Carefully, she leaned down and clicked her boots out of the board. She hoisted it and trudged up to the cave mouth. It was the fourth she’d found today. If she kept pace, she would see three more tomorrow and another nine before her week-long trek ended.

Two weeks ago, in a dingy conference room at a rented Denver office, she looked at her manager with a scowl.

“They want to hire me?”

“They want to hire a professional snowboarder, Meri,” she answered. “They said they can pay.”

“In what, empty lysol cans?” Meri quipped, looking at the stained office chair with no intention of sitting in it.

“Probably not. The place would be clean if they’d used the cans,” her manager answered. The older woman looked for somewhere that might have just enough clean space to offer a place to lean or sit. She came up empty, and instead chose an awkward stance a foot from the table.

Moments later, the door swung up and two men, one even younger than Meri and one very old, a septuagenarian for sure, walked in.

“Meri, good afternoon,” the elder said.

“Fellas, this isn’t the best first impression,” her manager said. “We’d be happy to hear you out, but we’ll need some assurances that the payment is-”

The younger man reach into the inner pocket of his blazer. He pulled out a small stack of cash and tossed it onto the table.

“That doesn’t look real,” her manager said, looking at the oddly designed bill. “McKinley?”

“Meri knows it’s real,” the old man said with a smile. “Because Meri is a Teddy Roosevelt buff.”

“McKinley was the last President Roosevelt served. When he was shot, Roosevelt went from VP to the big time,” Meri explained to her manager without ever taking her eyes off the old man. “How do you know I like Old Ironsides?”

“That was Oliver Cromwell.”

“No, I wouldn’t support a thief,” Meri defended.

“And that’s Oliver Twist.”

“I’m sorry, I’m lost. Is this money real?” Her manager was good in the industry, but she wasn’t as cerebral as Meri. But Meri had known her since they were seven years old, and Meri was loyal to people who knew her way back when.

“Yeah,” Meri replied. “It’s real.”

“We want your help.” The old man oozed quiet confidence when he spoke.

“To do what?”

“Find something for us,” the young man said. He extracted a small tablet from his back pocket, activated the screen and flipped it around to show the two women. “Here.”

“The Canadian Rockies are a big place,” Meri said. “I’m surprised you couldn’t find them before now.”

The old man chuckled and rubbed his chin. He leaned forward and tapped the screen. A few articles popped up; some old newspaper scans, others more recent digital stories.

“Over the last 129 years, there have been no less than 8 sightings of a door trapped in an ice cave. Wooden door, in its frame, encased all in ice, somewhere in the Canadian Rockies,” he explained. The two women watched the slideshow flit by on the screen as he spoke. 19th century ice climbers, plane crash survivors, extreme sports enthusiasts and, strangely enough, a Bigfoot search party lost after a storm.

“A door frozen in ice?” the manager shook her head in disbelief.

“Yes. No one has photos. The only proof, if it can be called that, are the eyewitness accounts.”

“And you believe them?” Meri asked.

“We do,” the old man answered.

For a long moment, Meri considered the men and the screen. The money was clearly better than she could have hoped. And with sponsorship deals drying up after two seasons of injuries and her breakup with a pop star, she had bills to pay. Bills much larger than she cared to admit. She guessed she was here because the old man knew that just like he knew of her affinity for Roosevelt.

“Will you help us look? The money’s good, and we can provide a chopper in & out.”

“If you have the money, why not just send a team to comb the mountainside?” Meri asked.

“In this particular case, discretion will likely prove the better part of, you know, whatever,” the old man replied, waving his hands lazily.

Meri nodded. She knew that meant trouble. And somewhere inside her, she got a little charge. It was a familiar feeling, but one she hadn’t had in far too long. She remembered it from the first time she flew down a steep hill on her skateboard, the first time she took off from a snowboard jump, the first time she landed a flip on her uncle’s jet ski.

The anticipating of something new, something dangerous. Conquerable.

“There is one condition,” the young man said, looking from her to the old man then back.

“What’s that?”

“You can’t open the door if you find it. Or ask what’s on the other side.”

“Why would I do that? It’s a door frozen in ice for who knows how long in the middle of nowhere. Whoever put it there took great pains to make sure whatever’s on the other side stays there,”  Meri reasoned. Then she had a quick thought and spoke before she could stop herself. “Or did they put it there to keep us out?”

Silence came framed by a smile from the elder man.

“You were right,” the young man said to his partner.

“Right about what?” Meri asked.

A wrinkled smile. “You asked the right question.”

Meri stomped into the ice cave and looked around. She wedged her board into a safe spot and began to scan the walls and roof. The door might be here. It might be in one of the other pre-identified caves. Or it might be somewhere else entirely.

In truth, she didn’t care if she found it or not. She’d meant what she told those two men in that meeting room. The door was there for one of two reasons: to keep something out, or to keep us in. But she wanted, very badly, to find it. To be the first to see it on purpose, first to photograph it, first to feel the cold wood against her skin. To conquer the mystery.