"The place seemed holy, where one might hope to see God."
"Precious night, precious day to abide in me forever. Thanks be to God for this immortal gift."
- John Muir
My "epic" snowmobile story is long overdue. What do these quotes have to do with getting stuck in the mountains you ask? I'll give you a hint, sometimes what seems like the most terrible thing turns into an amazing blessing.
Our Program Director, Reuben, and I were out on a scouting trip in the high mountains near Camp. We had followed a new road up the mountain and had cut through some pretty serious rough terrain with the snowmobile when the road emptied out into a wide saddle. The view was breathtaking.
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| "The view was breathtaking" |
After a quick break we continued further into the area we wanted to explore. We were fighting our way down the road when suddenly, the road dropped away. The only way out was to keep pushing farther, trying to "sidehill" the slope with the snowmobile.
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| "Side-hilling" |
As we continued, I could tell Reuben leaning on the snowmobile wasn't enough to lean it onto it's edge, so I swung my leg around to step on the side of the vehicle. As I did, I lost my balance and had to step off. At first, I chuckled thinking man that was silly. But as I saw Reuben continue to keep driving, I realized that he was so focused on not getting the sled (snowmobile) stuck that he didn't see me step off behind him. I shouted in futility as I watched Reuben drive off, farther and farther.
And so, thus began the walk to him. I knew that Reuben would eventually realize I wasn't there, so all I had to do was close the distance between ourselves and then jump on the sled and we'd be off again. However, I started cursing myself for not having my snowshoes with me as I kept "post-holing" into tree well after tree well in the deep snow. After one particularly deep dive where I sank up to my chest, I noticed that I couldn't hear the sound of the snowmobile's engine anymore. Interesting.
A minute or two later I saw Reuben walking towards me. After quick apologies, a few chuckles and throwing on my newly delivered snow shoes, we started hiking in the direction of our ride out. As we walked, Reuben offered up "so... the sled sorta slipped down a hill. And ran into a tree." It turned out that as Reuben was driving the sled across another steep slope, he had to bail (jump off the sled in order to prevent it from tipping onto him). Unfortunately, the snowmobile didn't care that it no longer had a rider. As Reuben yelled to me to hit the "kill-switch", he realized that his passenger had disappeared and the snowmobile continued to run away down the slope, like an unruly child who just got free of his monkey-backpack-tether-leash and was now free to explore on his own. Despite Reuben's best efforts to pull the sled towards him, it continued to drive downhill, straight into a tree.
Reuben and I then spent two or three hours trying to get the snowmobile free. We used deadman anchors, vector angles, logs as levers and more to try and extricate our ride home- to no avail. Finally, with a "Huh.." Reuben discovered a tree wedged into the undercarriage of the snowmobile that effectively locked it in place. Once we removed that, it was only fifteen minutes before we had the sled turned around into a position that we could drive out from.
The moment of truth came. Reuben started the engine, I took my position pulling to the side of a ski and..... the sled sunk. It continued this until the track eventually hit frozen, slick dirt. We now realized we weren't getting out by ourselves. So, we hiked back to the saddle where we had cell phone reception, then called Camp and asked them to bring up another sled with some special gear, normally used for climbing. Two hours later, around 8pm, Garrett and Timo showed up. Two or three more hours and we had the sled free and thus began our nighttime descent of the mountain. The stars were out and, despite the need to lean into corners to prevent tipping and the occasional air from a bump, that ride was incredibly peaceful.
We rolled back into camp at about midnight and I sat for awhile in the lodge thinking about what a blessing God had turned the night into. Sometimes the things that seem terrible in the moment, are really just the opposite. If we take the time to step outside of our circumstance and realize this, I feel like we will get a much deeper appreciation of God's blessings.
