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“You are 20 years old,” Mr. McLachlan says. “And to think, if I don’t get up, me — get up — right now, and get us some more wood, we are going to die out here. It is the weirdest thing.”

Around 4 a.m. the blizzard subsided. The temperature was minus-43. Day broke. Mr. McLachlan heard an engine in the distance. He ran toward it, chasing the sound through a stand of trees.

You could see death, right there

“I just kept going and then I saw a house,” he says. “It was just like the movies. Going up the stairs, one at a time. There was this big door — it had a lever handle on it — and I dropped my hand on it and fell inside.

“The owner came running. I told him my girlfriend and dog were still in the bush and he ran outside and was gone for them.

“It was such a relief.”

They had been lost for 26 hours. They weren’t, in fact, even in Canada anymore. They were in Minnesota.

Mr. McLachlan could lose his baby toes to frostbite. Even if he doesn’t, he will be in a wheelchair for another three weeks and will have to learn to walk again. Ms. Mardynalka has frostbite on her nose and upper thighs. She has been having trouble sleeping and was uncomfortable speaking to me about their experiences, so let Mr. McLachlan do the talking. (Torque, the Pomeranian, pulled through just fine.)

“I thought Torque was dead more than once,” Mr. McLachlan says. “But I would have never guessed Leandra would have that kind of strength. She was tough as nails.”

She stayed calm. Now it is time for her boyfriend to be nervous. One of the things they discussed during the loneliest hours of the night was getting married.

“It is definitely in the cards,” Danny McLachlan says. “But I am going to need to talk to her Dad first.”

National Post

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