By Gretchen Keiser

I arose early last Wednesday morning, pushing back the curtain to see a gray cast on the day. My radio was already saying that no one with half a lick of sense was going outside. Anyone with the fortitude and fortune to get home Tuesday night was staying there.

But it didn't set right with me. For one, I'm a short walk from the MARTA train in Decatur, which I knew, from years in Boston and New York, would run regardless of the weather.

For another, let's be honest, it didn’t look like very much snow. Five years of working for a newspaper outside New York City had taught me that roads were often not quite as impassable as they would have you think. And it's amazing what you can drive through when an editor sweetly points out that your co-workers have made it to the office, and gets the four people who made it to type up a storm in the background so it sounds like everyone's there.

I'm afraid, Wednesday morning, that I succumbed to a moment of Yankeeism and that, if anyone had been around to see, I actually sprang out the front door with more enthusiasm than on a gorgeous Georgia day.

The first sign of something amiss was the sidewalks to the station -- a bit icier than I'd thought. But dressed for the weather, I stomped along, or skated over the more treacherous sections. On the train, I met two DeKalb Hospital workers who had made it to MARTA after a long, long night. They were quite dumbfounded that I was heading downtown on purpose and, feeling a little bit sheepish, I gave them my excuse -- at the Greyhound station a package was waiting that held the page proofs for The Georgia Bulletin.

Normally proofreading is done both at our Publication Office near Augusta, and in Atlanta, Wednesday before the paper is printed and mailed. And press deadlines are immovable.

"It must be a pretty important package," one of the hospital workers said, casting a dubious glance toward her friend and moving just slightly away from me.

A tiny note of worry began to insinuate itself into my thoughts as we reached the Five Points MARTA station. Suddenly disoriented in downtown Atlanta, I emerged, looking for landmarks to guide me and quickly was out of hollering range of my hospital acquaintance, who inched her way, shrieking and sliding, toward a bus. It was half a block away. It looked like miles.

As far as the eye could see, there was ice, for the bridge railing on the overpass, across Peachtree Street and right up to the MARTA shelter. Each step looked momentous. The Greyhound station seemed as remote as Greenland. But I had found my direction, and the sidelong glance of a MARTA worker, spreading salt and questioning my sense, spurred me on.

I skated across Peachtree Street and, clinging to the bridge railing, got a little stability and momentum. At least I was going forward. Too bad it starts on a down-hill.

Ahead of me, ten or so people were strung out like climbers tied by an invisible rope, each taking their best shot: some opting for the building edges, others braving it at the curbs. I just hadn't considered snow and ice without voluminous piles of salt and sand. I hadn't thought that, unlike New England, every Atlanta business is not equipped with shovels, and a bag of something -- even fireplace ashes -- to cut the ice.

Inch by inch, I made it eventually to the middle of Peachtree Street, marveling at the alien look of all the familiar sights -- how wide the road seems when it's empty off into the distance and how everything human, even the buildings, seem cut down to size and altered by the snow and ice clinging to every crevice.

At least I reached Margaret Mitchell Square, weary but in sight of Greyhound. Maneuvering to the other side of the street, I was crushed. The leaping dog on the sign was just a few blocks away, but we were separated by an unbroken expanse of glistening ice. In the blocks between, only one man could be seen, a tow truck operator who was trying to get out to help someone, but having trouble walking himself. His legs splayed and both hands grasped the truck side. His feet kept swimming, looking for a grip as he half hung on the vehicle.

Visions of all the northern snows I had conquered suddenly melted as quickly as my courage. It was all downhill. I wouldn't have tried it on a sled. And I began to wonder what time it was and whether the printer was even waiting to hear from me after so long. After a feeble attempt to approach from the north, I was ready to quit. Then I met a woman, struggling toward home in the high heels and proper office attire she had put on the day before. We exchanged plights as we slogged along, she about a night trapped in the city, I about the elusive package. "Don't give up," she advised me as we parted. "You've made it this far. Try the curbs."

Instead, I skidded into a steam-windowed shop, the only one I'd seen that was open. The fast-food restaurant, run by Koreans, was filled with people emerging from nearby offices for sausage biscuits. You have never heard people so happy to be handed coffee and a biscuit -- as if being reassured that a measure of the South had survived Tuesday night. Warmed by the coffee and pluck of this motley crew, ill-dressed for the weather, but laughing and determined, I decided if these nearly senior citizens in heels were managing, I could make it.

I went out, approaching from the south this time, on Luckie Street, and after a gallant assist from a few men accustomed to surviving and sleeping in Atlanta's streets, made it to less treacherous terrain. Spring Street was even slushy, as buses began to travel on a regular bases. Dodging a truck, and a nasty look from the driver, I continued my parade around the corner, and slid into the Greyhound parking area. It was 10:30, two hours after I had left home. The lone Greyhound attendant asked what I wanted and I burst out laughing. By now it had dawned on me that the only people here were those stuck and a few type-A personalities, fighting the nature of the place. "I came for a package," I said, controlling myself momentarily. He ambled to a desk where slips of paper note arrivals. He shuffled the list once, then twice. He asked the name again and shuffled again. It's not here, he said. His words escaped me; I almost didn't hear him. He tried again: "Where was the package coming from?" Augusta, I said. No buses, he said, had made it from Augusta to Atlanta overnight. I started chuckling again, then wrapped my scarf around my head, zipped my coat up and slid my way uphill to MARTA.

(The trip was not in vain. When I got home, at 11:30, I was less of a northerner than when I set out. The folks at our Waynesboro office proofread the paper for us. I crawled in bed and took a nap.)