“Do you remember the last time we saw snow?” I asked my wife as we stood next to the van in the pull out off California Highway 108 the only mountain road open in this area. We stared at the giant meringue pile in silence for a while. It felt like someone had left the refrigerator door open.
“It snowed last year at cousin Lynn’s in Chicago,” she said after some thought.
“That wasn’t snow, it was a light dusting of dandruff,” I said. “She laughed at us for getting excited over nothing.”
I knew many people in Key West who grew up there and had never seen snow. I felt like one of them now as I watched Rusty see snow for the first time. He approached the drifts cautiously but soon, unlike me, he was running and jumping and rolling in snow like it was the most fun he’d had all year. He lay in it panting with a huge grin on his face.
Traitor I thought as I wondered why my South Florida rescue dog was enjoying what I feared.
“Do you suppose we might get stuck in it?” We’ve got our Promaster stuck in some awkward places, sand clay and gravel mostly. Snow would be a new delight, a new concern to top the agenda of errors I might easily lead us into.
“Of course we might,” Mrs Practical said, “If you don’t listen to me and drive where you shouldn’t we’re bound to mess up again.”
That was harsh but she had a point. Most recently we spent two weeks living off grid in the bush in Belize, an uncomfortable place, after I drove us into a clay pit. I’d had the best of intentions but the experience has left us feeling somewhat vulnerable. Especially after we skinned the front tires raw winching ourselves out of a ditch in Guatemala. Not entirely my fault that one, but still.
I looked at the snow piled up at the side of the road pondering future encounters.
Here we were at 9500 feet surrounded by unaccustomed frozen water, stuff that in civilized parts like Florida is stored indoors only to be brought out in public in a cocktail glass. Here it was everywhere,unruly and deep and threatening.
“Do you suppose we could winch ourselves out of it if we need to?” Our Promaster has a 12,000 pound winch at the front. We have used it rather more often than we should have, to save us from my enthusiasm for giving unlikely tracks a go. “We’ll be fine!” are my famous last words accompanied by a deep sigh from my wife of thirty years.
“We aren’t going to find out,” Layne said firmly sinking deeper into her jacket that she had pulled out of the winter clothes locker after a winter in Mexico.
Next year we want to improve our life as elderly retirees by trying to drive South America along the Andes a mountain range 7,000 miles long and 15,000 feet high. It sounded absurdly ambitious as we stood in the Sierra Nevada looking at modest left over snow from last winter’s blizzards. Biting off more than we could chew came to mind. My feet were cold and my nose was dripping; snow is for the birds, my Key West friends were right.
The van was fine, as usual. It hauled us up the hairpins slowly and steadily at a pace the pioneers would have approved of in their ox carts.
Downhill we went at last relieved to see the temperature rise to the civilized 80s and the snow to disappear back to the horizon where it belonged.
We stopped for lunch at the side of the road pondering our first encounter with winter realities.
“Do you want ice in your Coke?” Layne asked brightly from behind the fridge door.
“What do you think?” I said unnecessarily harshly, as I thought of the cold that is to come in our van lives. I married a very determined woman, so if we get stuck in a snow drift in Peru … this time it will be her fault.
A prescribed burn:
