On Thin Ice: Some days it would be better just to stay home.

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           “Aggghhhh,” my man grunt turned into a groan of agony as I sank to my knees in the snow.  Romay and I had been loading eight-foot long sections of spruce into the back of our pickup for less than an hour when I had grabbed a hold of what I thought was a small one. 

            In relation to the others I had been loading that morning and earlier that week, it was.  Though eight feet long, it was only about eight inches across the butt, and I wasn’t really lifting, but was turning it end over end up out of the ditch and onto the road.  I must have added a slight twist to the lift and ended up not really analyzing what caused it as much as to how I was going to regain a standing position.

            I crawled on my hands and knees to the back of the truck and grabbed a hold of the lowered tailgate, pulled myself to standing and then leaned against the truck as I shuffled to the passenger side. 

            “Romay,” I yelled “we’re heading home.  You’re driving.”

            My father’s wisdom in teaching me to drive stick at a young age in case of an emergency came back to me as my fourteen-year-old daughter fired up the truck, slipped it into first gear, released the clutch and pointed us toward home.

            “You okay?” she asked as she navigated the snow filled road.

            “Yeah, just a little sore,” I said as I pressed my palm into the seat to support myself.  “I think I might have put my back out.”

            When Romay was growing up, putting my back out was a regular occurrence.  She would ambush me from the back of a chair, wrap her arms around my neck, wait until I got close to a wall or counter and then push off with her legs.  Without fail, my back would go out every time, but since living in a community with a swimming pool, my core had regained the strength needed to keep my back in place.  I had been moving over a cord of green spruce a day from the ditches to the truck for around a week though, and evidently that takes a toll on a body.

            Upon returning home, I took a hot shower, and didn’t move far from the couch for the rest of the day.  With some rest, my muscles would loosen, and my back would pop back into place unexpectedly with an audible clunk.  Rest was the answer.

            The next day was beautiful outside and Myra asked the obvious question, “Are you and Romay going to go set traps today?”

            I don’t do rest well.

            I got dressed, threw together a trapping bag and went out to get the snow machine going while Romay got ready.  Two pulls and the motor was running.  While it warmed up, I walked around to the cargo rack on the back, grabbed a hold, bent my knees and hoisted it up out of the snow where it had frozen to the ground.  Lightning shot up and down my spine and I found myself back on my knees in the snow.

            I pressed myself up and gingerly walked around to the front skis where I lifted the nose of each one to break it out of the ice.

            “You look like you are doing better today,” Myra commented as I stepped back in the house to check Romay’s progress.  She hadn’t seen me grimace and fall.

            “Yeah,” I said, “beautiful day out.”

            And it was.  Galena normally does not have wind, but December is usually way below zero.  The mercury had been flirting with zero to ten above all week, and the warmth was making most of the locals feel giddy.  It didn’t matter how my back was feeling, it was nice out, and Romay and I were going trapping.

            Romay was ready, we got on the idling machine and headed out the trail right behind our house.  It led past a couple of dry lake beds and into some beaver ponds that each held at least one lodge.  Our destination was a large pond with a lodge on it that had been inactive, but showed a lot of otter sign around it.  A pull-out hole was right next to the old lodge, and it was our plan to go and set a 220 Conibear over the hole.

            We drove up and parked the machine on the land just behind the lodge.  A couple of years earlier, I had learned why not to park next to a beaver house as we chiseled a friend’s frozen rig out.  In a moment of weakness, he had pulled up in front of it to save himself walking ten yards, dropped his machine through the ice, and then had to walk the seven miles home in the dark.

            Even though this lodge was inactive (most times a frosted vent hole or even steam coming out of the top of an active one is easily visible), there was no need to tempt fate.  I walked over and checked the hole.  It was still open.

            “Dad, can I go over on the other side?” Romay called out as I dug the trap out of the bag.

            “Sure,” I responded without looking up.

            We had a cold early winter, the ice was solid, and this lodge didn’t hold beavers anymore.  There would be no harm in her walking around behind and back out onto the ice.

            “Dad!” came a panicked yell from just over my shoulder.

            Romay had walked the opposite way I had anticipated going right over where the pull-out hole was.  I turned just in time to watch her drop through the ice and into the water.

            Three steps and I was to where she had gone in.  I snatched the coat collar of the girl now up to her chest in ice water, braced one foot on the lodge just below the water line, and yanked her up and out and onto the good ice.  Below the water, a feed pile of willows was evident, sign that beavers were there and active.  Later she would tell me that she had never touched the bottom.

            “You’re okay.  You’re going to be fine,” I reassured her as I looked into frightened eyes.

            I helped her onto the machine and fired it up with one pull of the recoil rope.  The shortest route was across an open powder filled field.  In a place of cold and little wind, snow fills in the dry lakes and fields to bottomless proportions, but with a hand on the throttle, I could maintain plane and take the short cut rather than taking the weaving, slow trail we had followed in.

            The engine screamed as we floated across the field and intersected the hard-packed trail.  The skis came up on hard snow and forced the tail of the machine down, digging a pit into the powder.  I jumped off, Romay still on the seat, I grabbed the cargo rack and willed the machine out of the thigh deep hole it had sunk into, and shoved it up far enough for the lugs of the track to gain purchase on the hard-pack.

            Back on the throttle and flying the three miles home, we passed one bewildered woodcutter who we didn’t bother to return his wave. 

            “You’re going to be all right,” I yelled over the motor.  “We’re almost home.”

            Romay stripped out of her ice coated snow gear in the arctic entry way and stiffly ran up the inside stairs to the bathroom and a warm shower.

            “What happened?” Myra asked as she watched a frightened, crying girl fly past her.

            “Thin ice,” I responded.

            Myra’s expression was enough for me to know I had been both dumb and lucky.

            Thirty minutes of hot shower water later, pajamas, a blanket, and a light-hearted movie on television, a teen girl laid curled up on the couch cuddled next to her dad.  Perhaps it would have been better had we just been there all day from the start.

Safe and comfortable in a warm home.