Some of the Old Before we Ring in the New

After the insanity of the Christmas season has finally passed us by, and I have a moment to pause for breath and realize the New Year is upon us, it has dawned on me that I have neglected to share a few of my favorite stories from the fall/winter season thus far on my blog. So I might perhaps go backwards for a few entries before I go forwards in 2009 and take care of some housekeeping as I would be remiss in not sharing a few good laughs.


First of all I will inform one and all that yes, indeed the tree did remain standing all season without a single tip over, which is a Peterson first (at least since Isabelle has been with us). I did take the darn thing down before New Years, however, since we got it fairly early this year and it was one crispy tree by the end and was shedding its needles, like a dog sheds its winter coat in the spring.


But for those of you who miss the "anger management" moments my husband, shall we say, finds himself in, I will relate the tale of getting our Jeep Commander stuck. Shortly after the conclusion of hunting season, Clay needed to return to his deer blind to pick up a few items like his trail camera, corn feeder, propane tank (yes, his blind is heated). He also does a few routine things to "lock it down" for the winter and puts out a salt block for the deer. Now here in the U.P. we had already gotten a fair amount of snow very early, and so while this was only the first weekend after the conclusion of rifle season, we had some question as to whether or not we would be able to drive back to his blind which involves driving across a portion of a forty acre field.


Now before we go any further you might ask why I was along for the ride in the first place, as normally I would have avoided this little activity. Simply put we were on our way to pick up Isabelle at my in-laws, who had babysat for her the previous night at their house and Clay's blind happens to be on the way there. Ya know, the whole "kill two birds with one stone idea," which sounds good in theory but not so much in practice.


Anyways, after stopping at hunting camp and pulling in and out of there with no problem whatsoever we drive around on the road and pull up to the gate of the field where Clay's blind is. Before us is a monstrous snow drift, and I am already thinking we should not drive through this, but Clay unlocks the gate in record time and is back in the Commander and gunning us through it before I can blink. The Commander cuts through the drift like butter, and I have to admit I am impressed. Wow, what power! The four wheel drive is humming along. Okay, maybe we are fine. After all, we did get in and out of camp, and that drift was huge and that was caused by the road plow so nothing that big will be in the field, and we just flew through that like nothing, right? Right? And so it seemed as we drove right by the old trailer, the white snow around us like a huge white sea ..... and then we stopped moving. Right smack dab in the middle of the field we bogged down and came to a halt. Clay tried the old rock back and forth bit to no avail, and as I tried to sink myself into the leather bucket seat and disappear I felt the tension rise inside the car. I watched him open his door and stifled the gasp in my throat when the snow was level to the door. Oh, boy. Then, of course, when he called his parents, his mother informed him that his father was not home, having run out to the store or neighbors. (Keep in mind where they live isn't exactly super close so it would have been a decent wait even if he had been right there). I decide to get out of the car and truly see how stuck is stuck.

I sink in snow up to mid-thigh, and silently curse my husband as I push through to the front of the Commander, where the snow has mounded up like a wave in front of the hood. I cannot even see the wheel wells let alone the front tires. Ugh. Standing in the snow I become well aware of the fact that I am not dressed for long term exposure clad in my slip-on Merrells (which are shoes, not boots) jeans, my Columbia jacket, thankfully, and only a pair of fleece gloves. I dug for a few minutes half-heartily, exposing the front passenger tire and watching it spin uselessly when Clay applied the gas then climbed back inside the car after seriously weighing the pros and cons of freezing to death or having to sit next to Clay while he fumed about being stuck. My lack of circulation won.

Back in the car I was informed that he had finally contacted a neighbor nearby who had a tractor (thank God for the local farmers) who would be coming to our rescue in approximately twenty minutes. What passed next was the longest twenty minutes of my life. We tried listening to the Packer game.... no good as the team was losing. (as you all know, not their best season, sigh.) I tried humor "Well, Clay you always make it interesting!" (met with icy stare and stone cold silence). And then as always it disintegrated into Clay bemoaning how things always worked against him and how was he ever going to get to his blind now? All I kept thinking was, Really? We are stuck in snow up to our asses, I am sitting here in soaking wet socks and jeans and still cannot feel my fingers and you are still thinking about getting out to the damn blind?! So, I suggested maybe on a return trip a sled and some snow shoes, but that, after all, it wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't like we were going out there to rescue a person. We were retrieving some belongings and "winterizing" the blind. A little perspective, please. I longed for my book, a person with a sense of humor, some dry clothes, a shot of tequila.

In what I am sure was a short amount of time (although it seemed forever) Greg showed up with the tractor and Clay hopped out to help him hook up to the Commander. I took a moment to call my mother-in-law on my cell and tell her that we would hopefully be on our way shortly. Helen's response to me was priceless. "Renee, I am so SORRY. Are you okay?" Can you tell the woman knows her son? I laughed and teased her about how I could feel her sympathy oozing through the phone from the first time he called her.

Of course, as is so often the case in Clay's world things worked out just perfectly. The tractor popped us out with hardly a tug, and then Greg drove around us and proceeded to plow right out to Clay's blind and back. That's right. In the end, Clay got to drive out to his blind and do everything he wanted to do, picked up all of his paraphernalia left behind from a successful hunting season (more on that in another entry) and we were on our way to my in-laws, albeit two-three hours later then I had anticipated. All is well that ends well, right? In the future though I am going to stock the car. Isn't the Boyscouts' motto, "Be prepared?"