There were no emergency apps, no GPS, no way to immediately summon assistance from a remote rural location.

Your options in a situation like that were to stay in the car and hope someone came by, or to try to walk to the nearest source of help.

Jean Hilliard got out of the car.

She was wearing a winter coat, mittens, and cowboy boots.

It was a reasonable outfit for a night out in Minnesota in December.

It was profoundly inadequate for a two-mile walk through whiteout conditions at 22 below.

She thought Wally Nelson’s farmhouse was close.