27/06/2017
It may not have been the coldest day, but it certainly was the windiest. Our traveler found himself lost in a constant 35 mph wind, 6000 feet up a treacherous mountain. The deafening wind hid the trail, and took away any sensation he may have had left in his face and limbs. Waist deep in snow and quickly losing his rational thinking ability, he decided to crouch behind the only tree wide enough to partially break the wind.
Would this really be the last story of an adventure filled life? He thought back to the numerous hikes he had through Hokkaido, setting rope-less climbing records and fighting off highly feared brown bears. Or his cross country North America adventure where he narrowly escaped with his life from greedy gold rush miners and wild west cowboys. Or even his summers spent foraging through the thick Costa Rican Jungles searching for the cure to Polio and befriending a wild Jaguar that had wanted to previously kill him. After all of that, would snow really be the end to it all?
He struggled to keep to stay awake and keep any kind of body heat. As he dozed off, a blindingly white wolf with bright blue eyes appeared, just above the snow. Realizing he was drifting off to sleep or the afterlife, he heard the wolf call his name. "Simon" the wolf whispered, "follow me." Realizing he had finally succumbed to the snow and was transitioning to the afterlife, he decided to follow the wolf. Simon effortlessly pushed through thick walls of snow having lost all sensation in his body and followed the wolf. The sun had finally set and Simon could see nothing but the shiny white coat and brilliant blue eyes of the wolf. And then everything went black.
He awoke to find himself in a small wooden cabin, just as the sun was rising. In shock and disbelief he couldn't figure out if he was alive or not and how he got to the cabin. Simon vaguely remembered a talking wolf, but there's no way that could have been real. He sat up, still feeling weak and unsure how he would be able to get home. On the table was a freshly brewed cup of coffee whose sweet, fragrant aroma filled the entire cabin. He approached the table and next to the steaming cup of coffee was a piece of paper with instructions on how to make the perfect cup of coffee. "I guess it was all a dream," Simon thought to himself "Or am I still dreaming?" He took a sip out of the cup, and as he did, he could feel his energy slowly returning.
He drank more and more, so quickly that he failed to realize how delicious the coffee was until it was all gone. Simon felt strange. His body had never pulsated like this before, eager to expend energy. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time he felt this healthy. He grabbed the secret to a perfect cup of coffee, put it in his pocket, and went for the door. As soon as he opened, there, in front of him, was the same white wolf with blue eyes. "Enjoy," it said and with that, it gave Simon a nod and darted off into the mountain.
Simon stood there for a minute, still in disbelief. Upon realizing he in fact wasn't dreaming and was alive, he sprinted down the side of the mountain. He had to tell someone this story, he had to get this secret of coffee out there.
Upon arriving back at the local village, no one believed his story of the wolf. They all assumed it was an hallucination, but Simon knew. He took that secret for how to make a perfect cup of coffee and shared it with the world. Had it not been for Simon and the White Wolf, we may have never known what perfect coffee tastes like.
