I'm writing this because I can't sleep and because saying what happened in plain order feels like the only way to keep it contained.

I'm not using last names. We were six people, me, Danny, Shane, Liv, Kyle, and Marcus.

We went to a cabin in northern Minnesota, past Ely, but not all the way to the border.

The cabin belonged to an old neighbor of Shains, who said we could use

it so long as we packed out our trash and kept the pipes from freezing. It was the third week of

January. The forecast said single digits during the day and well below zero at night. We

brought a generator, five gallons of treated gas, a toad of split oak, a tote of mixed food,

powdered soup, instant potatoes, jerky, oatmeal, two propane camp lanterns, a cheap two-way

radio set, a hand axe, a folding saw, a small first aid kit with two mylar blankets,

six headlamps with lithium batteries, and

one-thirty, thirty-lever-action rifle that belonged to Shane's dad. The idea was simple, two nights,

maybe three, of board games and quiet. No one was planning to hunt. There would be some day

hikes on snowshoes if the wind wasn't too bad. We were all in

our 30s except Marcus, who was 26 and took pictures of everything. I'm setting this down in the

same order it happened, and with the measurements and times we noted at the time or soon after,

I know memory gets soft around shock. Numbers help.

The cabin sat at the end of a seasonal road that a local plow guy kept open to the last

mailbox.

From there the driveway was a half mile of two faint ruts through Black Spruce and Aspen.

We parked at the mailbox at 3.10 p.m. and hiked in with sleds and packs. It was overcast, light wind from the

north. On the way, we passed a set of old snowmobile tracks crusted over, heading parallel to our

drive before cutting across it and into the trees. The cabin itself was a one-room structure,

...