Living on the edge

By Mike VanBuren
From the late February edition of The North Woods Call

    After several days of sub-zero temperatures and a couple feet of lake-effect snow, the thermometer reached a blistering 24 degrees.
     I had recently returned from Sunday morning worship services and it seemed like a good time to walk on water—frozen water, that is—so I pulled out the old Alaskan trapper snowshoes and took a hike  around the property.
    There’s nothing like a little fresh air and exercise to energize the body and soul.  Or so I thought.
      I wandered through the hillside pines behind The North Woods Call office, across an open meadow and down into the wetlands along Spring Brook.  Along the way, I followed the tracks of assorted woodland creatures that meandered back-and-forth across the surface of the snow.
     The field mice and cottontail rabbits seemed to have an easier time of it.  They stayed pretty much on top and ran from place-to-place without much impediment.  White-tailed deer, on the other hand—with their thin legs and sharp hooves—had sunken a foot or more beneath the crust as they waded between browses and the shelters they found under low-hanging pine boughs.
     I didn’t do much better, although my snowshoes only sank a few inches into the white powder.  After only about an hour of constant motion—stopping occasionally to snap a photograph of the pristine landscape—my lungs and leg muscles were beginning to complain and I was looking forward to a cup of hot tea beside the pellet stove.
     Maybe it’s the peril of advancing age, or perhaps I’m just a bit out-of-shape these days compared to the glory years of my youth.  Whatever the reason, I found myself contemplating previous generations of outdoorsman and lamenting the increasing softness of modern man.
     Take the voyageurs, for example.  These were tough men—mostly French Canadians who transported goods and supplies by canoe through the Great Lakes and northern wilderness during the fur-trade era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Unlike me—with the possible exception of the masonry work I did year-round during my late teens and early 20s—they lived a harsh life of toil.  Among other things, they had to carry at least two 90-pound bundles of fur over portages that were a half-mile, or longer, and some carried four or five bundles at a time.  Their wooden canoes were commonly 25 to 36 feet long and weighed 300 to 600 pounds empty.  On top of that, the vessels carried three tons of cargo.
     The men often rose as early as 2 or 3 a.m. to begin their typical day’s journey, and were expected to work 14 hours before bedtime  and paddle at a rate of 55 strokes per minute.  Danger was at every turn and not just because of exposure to outdoor living.  Drowning was common, along with broken limbs, compressed spines, hernias and rheumatism.  They did not have time to live off the land by hunting and fishing, so they carried their food with them, and often faced swams of annoying black flies and mosquitoes.
     Then there were those who took to the northern wilderness to seek their fortune in gold nuggets.  It is said that more than 100,000 people started off for the Klondike, but less than 30,000 actually made it to the gold fields in the Yukon Territory.  The difficulties of the Chilkoot and White Pass trails forced many to turn back.  Most found no gold at all, because—by the time they arrived—most of the good stakes had already been claimed.
     Jack London, of course, got several good stories out of the experience, but most others went home broke—if they went home at all—discouraged and defeated by the land they sought to tame.
     Such is often the fate of man against nature.
     Nature will ultimately be the victor, says a friend of mine, an outdoorsman and bush pilot in Alaska.  That’s why we must always work WITH her and not AGAINST her, he says.
     Yet, in this age of Kevlar canoes, lightweight camping gear and freeze-dried food, it’s tempting to believe that the odds are beginning to tilt in man’s favor.
     Some, of course, are better suited to hold their own in the great outdoors than others, but it’s still relatively easy to get into trouble if we forget our place when venturing into the wild.
     There really wasn’t much danger in a short snowshoe hike from my doorstep.  And it was indeed invigorating—for body and soul—to drink in the pure February air and warm my complacent muscles.
     But there were lessons to be learned, just the same, as I thought about advances in civilization and the great distance we have come from the earth that sustains us.

Slipping into Music City

By Mike VanBuren
From the early February edition of The North Woods Call

     You think winter’s tough in the north woods?
     Try getting around on snow and ice in the southern United States—say  Tennessee.
  My friend—a native of Nashville—calls it “Hillbillies on Ice.”  I call it weird.
     I learned about these challenges one strange February night on Interstate 40 in middle Tennessee.  My American Airlines flight had landed at Nashville’s International Airport around 8:30 p.m.  Temperatures were dropping fast and a drizzly rain began to fall as the big jet touched down and taxied to the terminal gate.
      No big deal.  I’m from Michigan.  I’m used to slick pavement and winter driving.  My biggest concern was finding the Holiday Inn and getting a good night’s sleep.  The next day would bring long hours in the edit suite at Elite Post on Music Row, putting the finishing touches on the Kellogg Foundation’s sustainable agriculture video.
      I stopped by the Avis desk and picked up a small rental car.  Then I threw my luggage into the trunk and headed out for the 20-minute drive into Music City, and a warm bed at the Holiday Inn.
    Traffic was light as I left the airport.  I was pleased to be keeping such a tight schedule.  At this rate, I’d have plenty of time to go over the edit script before turning in for the night.
     That’s when I saw it—up ahead in the westbound lanes of I-40.  The prettiest display of colored lights I’d seen since Christmas.  Flashing yellows.  Blinking reds.  Sparkling whites.  All accented by an icy glare on the road.  By the time I realized what I was getting into, I was far past the last exit ramp, rolling down a long incline toward a huge, six-lane parking lot.
      At least it looked like a parking lot.  There were cars, trucks, buses and vans everywhere—lined up like summer tourists at nearby Opryland.  I lifted my foot from the accelerator and pressed hard on the brake pedal, sliding to a not-so-graceful stop behind a pickup truck carrying two middle-aged men armed with open beer bottles.  I was relieved to stop before I rammed the vehicle, because it was one of those legendary trucks with a gun rack bolted over the rear window.
     At any rate, all three westbound lanes were clogged as far as I could see.  In a matter of seconds, I was imprisoned in the middle lane of a busy interstate highway, boxed in tighter than Carrie Underwood’s blue jeans by several other vehicles that came sliding in behind me.
    “Must be an accident,” I told myself, reaching to shut off the ignition.  “They’ll probably have it cleared in a few minutes.”
  I opened the car door and stepped outside.  It’s a good thing I had a tight grip on the metal doorframe, or I would have been stretched out on the cold, hard pavement with my feet wiggling in the air.  Several other people were also dancing around on the slippery blacktop, like clumsy Olympic figure skaters going for the gold in street shoes.
    I climbed back inside my car and started the engine.  The heat felt good on my chilled bones, so I let the motor run for 15 minutes or so.  Not being particularly interested in dying of carbon monoxide poisoning on a Tennessee highway, I eventually turned the motor off and waited until I started to shiver before switching it on again.
    After the first hour, I was getting a bit antsy.
     “What’s going on up there?” I asked the driver of the car parked next to mine, who seemed rather unconcerned with the delay.
      “Probably just the weather.”
   “A little ice on the road?  C’mon.  You’ve got to be kidding.”
       He wasn’t.  We sat for another hour.  Then another.  Then another.
   None of the other drivers seemed to think it was unusual to be sitting still on Interstate 40 in the middle of the night with no indication that the traffic would ever start moving again.  They just sat patiently in their cars and trucks and buses and vans—an apparently typical winter night on the Nashville freeway.
       After the fifth hour of starting and stopping and re-starting the car—too tired to stay awake and not wanting to fall asleep—I was sure I was either on Candid Camera, or lost in the Twilight Zone.  It was surreal.  I had been spinning the radio dial, listening to various news broadcasts and generally searching for a credible report about the huge traffic jam that had the city tied in knots.  Nothing.  Not a single mention of it on the airwaves.  And nobody but me seemed to think there was anything unusual about the information blackout.
     “Does this happen often?” I asked a young woman standing by the car behind me.
     “No.  It’s just the ice,” she said matter-of-factly.  “We’re not used to that down here, you know.”
      Oh, really?  As if they were used to spending the night on blocked freeways in sub-freezing temperatures.
     Along about 4:30 a.m., I leaned my seat back and was drifting in and out of a fitful slumber.  I don’t know how long I slept, but I was awakened with a start.  Bright lights were shining in my rear-view mirror and a loud air horn was rattling my car windows.  A huge salt truck had come weaving through the traffic behind me and the driver wanted us to move our cars out of the way so he could get through.
      Saved at last by a tardy truck driver and the blessed chloride that eats jagged holes in our automobiles.
      As the other cars edged off the road, I loitered between the middle and right lanes until the truck passed.  Then I moved in quickly behind the huge salt spreader and followed the yellow monster through a maze of stalled vehicles.  I nuzzled the back of the truck for about a mile-and-a-half —determined to hold my place—until we came to the first cars, parked smack in the middle of an open road.  No accident.  No barriers.  No pulling to the side of the road.  “Let’s just stop here, Jimmy—until spring.”
    I still don’t understand what happened that night.  I passed the salt truck on the three-lane stretch ahead and had no trouble moving about 35 miles-per-hour over the ice.  Within about 15 minutes, I was rolling into the Holiday Inn parking lot on West End Avenue, exhausted and bewildered.  It had been more than eight hours since I entered the traffic jam and I still had heard nothing on the radio indicating that there was a problem on the highway.
     I stumbled into the empty lobby and rang the bell to summon the desk clerk.  Within a few minutes, I was on the elevator to the seventh floor.  At the end of a long hallway, I slipped the key card into the slot and pushed open the door.  I was surprised when the door caught on the end of the security chain with a loud crash.
   “What the #%!?” I heard a sleepy, but startled man say from inside the darkened room.
    “Oops.  Sorry, “ I said, as I closed the door and made a hasty retreat to the elevator.  “Wrong room.”
    Back in the lobby, the desk clerk apologized repeatedly and set me up in a vacant suite on the fourth floor.  I climbed into the elevator once again and shuffled down another long hall to the replacement accommodations.  Inside, I threw my luggage on the floor and flopped onto the bed.  It was nearly 5:30 a.m. and I was scheduled to be at Elite Post in less than three hours.  I turned out the light and quickly fell into a hard sleep.
    It was going to be a rough day—one sure to make me long for a good ole Michigan winter.