Tuesday, April 14, 2020

About cheating death

The day before I left the East Pole for the season I hauled a sled full of stuff out to the trailhead. Among the items in it, the chainsaw lay strapped right on top. Taking it out for some servicing. The sun shined fuzzily through a hazy sky that day and the trail ran hard and fast.
So, comes the big day. Lots to do before leaving but with all the chores done and the sled loaded again, I took one last look around the cabin making sure I didn't forget anything. Fire laid ready for a match when I return. Check Moth balls between the windows and the bear boards to discourage bruintrusions. Check. Cell antenna brought indoors, check. Propane shut off and disconnected, check. and on and on. Toward the end of that survey my gaze fell on the little collapsible Swede saw I used to carry on my snowmachines but don't anymore.
Nah, I thought.
Out the door, locked, tested. one more check outdoors and off we go into a thick snowfall of wet heavy snow. (Later I recalled I forgot to bring in the bird feeder. A bear destroyed the last one, so I had better buy a replacement for next winter just in case it happens again.)
On my way and the machine/sled combination seemed sluggish. After just about a mile I had added a load of snow to what already felt like a maximum load. Looking back all I could see was snow, It covered the load and added maybe 50 pounds. The previous day on the return trip the machine had kicked so much of that wet snow into the sled I couldn't even tip it over; I had to shovel it out. Because of that I had covered this load with a tarp but it didn't help much. Every so often I had to stop and flip as much snow off the load as I could.
But that paled with the next difficulty; 
Two trees had blown down across the trail. I encountered a small birch first, the thickest bunch of its branches hiding trail, Just past that a larger spruce blocked the trail. They had me stopped wondering how I was going to get out of this mess. My mind flashed to that chain saw in the truck out at the trailhead. Then I fantasized that little Swede saw a mile or so behind me in the cabin. Neither would be much help now. The high berms along the trail discouraged an attempt to go around them. I tried driving over the birch but one ski went under and the other went over the main trunk. I backed up. I walked ahead and looked at the spruce which was bigger but had gone deeper into the snow of the trail. It looked like I could drive over that one if only I could get around the birch. I tried lifting it and pushing it off and it moved but when I let go it snapped back into place. Then I got the idea to try to trample the brushy part, that looked pretty good; jumping up and down on it even lowered the trunk a little so I might be able to get both skis over it.
I got a good running start at it and aimed for the smallest branches. Woo Hoo I got over them, and then there was no stopping, With a head of steam up, I aimed the machine at the low part of the spruce and crashed over it, in the process bringing a tangle of branches in the grill, tangles in the skis and even some in the track. However, I was past the obstruction and once I'd removed the detritus from the machine headed on to the destination. At the trailhead, the snow stopped and the roads from there on were dry. It was like Nature had to take one last lick at me before letting go. I hope I am welcomed back next winter into a kinder atmosphere. After the fact I posted on facebook that I had cheated death one more time.
Obviously nothing in this story was death-defying. As a matter of fact in the rare adventures that could have ended that way, I haven't said it. So, here's what's about cheating death. When I ran a tour boat, every day on our return, once the crew had tied off the boat, I always said, "cheated death one more time.' It was meant to be humorous. It was meant to kid the people who had been a little apprehensive about riding on a boat in the ocean. But in my own head it was also an homage to the natural powers that be for allowing me another safe voyage, and acknowledging where the power actually resided.
            More recently I have used it to tell people who expressed some concern about something I have been doing that things came out all right.

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The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

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"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

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"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

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My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

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A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

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So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

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It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

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Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

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Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

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“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

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I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

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