Cold, Cold, Cold
They’ve been coming for seventeen years, and I suppose I can say we, but it’s a smaller group who bought and own the place. A cabin in the woods. Fixed up so all can visit in in the dead of winter, to celebrate life, and love, and the great fortune of close friendship.
“The Native Americans called it the moon of the popping trees,” Joe says, explaining the sound we hear on arrival, a phenomenon which occurs this time of year when the sap runs in the heat of the day, but freezes to the sound of cracking bark when evening temperatures drop like a stone. “Warm days, cold nights.”
Freezing best describes the temps we arrive to, well below zero, though a large wood burning stove called The Defiant will soon warm the place so much so we will complain.
“We’re going for a hundred-degree difference between inside and out,” Chris announces the next morning after temps drop to minus twenty overnight. Six of us in a cabin in the hills of Northern Vermont, not far from everything we know, and far from anything familiar.
Off the grid. That’s us. A half dozen alone with enough food and water. And our skis. This year’s weather a reminder of the fragility of life in bitter cold — keep moving — and the short lives we live on this earth — keep loving. Our dear friend Leif stayed home this year, though we see him and Leah at their house before and after the weekend sojourn. A chance to catch-up, to talk of the Bruins and Celtics, to revel in another year of dominant Boston teams. Leif’s living with ALS, a terrible disease, the second in our small posse so afflicted. None of us can fathom the odds.
“Take this and release it for Leif,” Leah says of a large paper lantern you might find floating up into azure skies at Burning Man. Lanterns launched carrying the hopes and prayers of the people standing below. On this night, we have just one torch and one prayer, that for a miracle cure for our friend and teammate Leif Larsen. Flame lit and glowing, we launch our spirits into a star filled Vermont sky. A moment to celebrate the generosity, humor and prowess of the best athlete in our group.
“They say athletes are more likely to suffer the disease,” someone offers, but I don’t know. “We love you Leif.”
“We’re blessed to have this group of lifelong friendships,” Guido says. His birthday the impetuous for an annual pilgrimage into the woods where, these last two-years, flakes fall in spectacular numbers.
Snow globe the simplest way to describes the phenomena during this, a season of uncharacteristically warm temps on a planet in convulsion. Sixty degrees immediately followed by subzero temps in Vermont while Southern California digs out of once in a lifetime blizzards. We are living in upheaval.
“I like the quiet up here,” Joe says, the two of us up early each day, he tending The Defiant, I reading and writing my way through morning constitutional. We share appreciation for the silence of no tech. Layers of quiet, both physical and emotional, city life far enough behind to allow for the enjoyment of simpler activities. Hiking, skiing, listening to music and laughing. Lots and lots of talking and laughing when phones are finally discarded.
“More,” Dave and I say after laying down a set of glorious figure-eight turns in fresh powder off the cabin’s back porch. Achievement culture sneaking in just when we least expect it. “Best ever,” we say, our capitalist tendencies not so easily shed, not even for a weekend.
This only my third year of the possible seventeen, but second in a row. The rest of the crew more regular to this magical place set at the top of a dirt road near the town of Corinth, Vermont. Dirt road now covered in deep snow, a two mile hike up from where my Honda Odyssey whimpered “no mas”.
“I’m driving up,” Dave says altering the scene in three words.
“You can’t. You’ll get stuck,” Guido protests as we repeat almost verbatim last year’s debate over Leif truck’s ability navigate various twists and turns of the driveway.
“I’m doing it,” Dave says, insistent. I jump in his Subaru and up we go, the first time maybe ever that the group doesn’t have to trudge up laden with a large black sled that you’d more likely find during the Iditarod.
Up we go, to no water, electricity, or heat. A three-day break enjoyed with friends linked by years playing ultimate, a group bonded as much by rented van travel as by winning. Only now do we begin to appreciate how to keep score.
