A Cold Detour

“Okay,” Christa nodded lovingly as she pushed a mitten onto the left hand of her second son. “Now you're all set to go.”

“Yes!” five-year-old Scott exclaimed with joy. 

He leapt from the kitchen chair onto the black and white linoleum floor. He clapped his hands, creating a muffled noise as his mittened hands collided. Scott was going to his grandpa's house and he was super excited. He wasn't sure what they were going to do, but he knew he was going to have fun. Sometimes they would work in the workshop. Sometimes they would read a story. Sometimes they went sledding on one of grandpa's Flexible Flyer runner sleds.

“Okay, Scotty,” his mother interrupted his train of thought. “Now, you walk straight to Grandpa's house. Don't get side tracked or distracted. Deal?”

Scott nodded.

“Say deal,” Christa prodded. 

“Deal!” he exclaimed as if he had been waiting for her to demand that response.

Christa walked her second son through the back porch and opened the storm door. She watched as he confidently made his way down the sidewalk towards her in-laws' residence up the hill from the historical family farm. She chuckled as he waddled slightly against the restrictive nature of the snow suit in which she had dressed him. The full body, hooded suit was almost too small for him, but she figured it would last through this winter. She waited until he had crossed the gravel driveway and was well past the barn before turning back towards the kitchen where a sink full of dishes awaited her.

“A mother's work is never done,” she smiled to herself.

In the meantime, Scott was on cloud none. He was walking to his grandpa's house. In the snow. By himself. At the advanced age of five, he was practically a grown up. He could be a little more grown up, of course. He could be six. Scott liked being five, but for some reason, he thought that five was a weird number to be.

He stopped and looked straight up at the sky. Puffy white clouds spotted the vibrant blue backdrop and at times seem indistinguishable from the snow flakes that drifted through his line of sight. He watched as a jet plane made a thin white line across the blue like it was playing connect the dots with the clouds. He imagined for a moment what the picture might look like if the plane had been able to connect all the dots, but got distracted as the jet path fanned out and faded into nothing. He opened his mouth wide in an attempt to catch one of the bigger snow flakes as it fell lazily from the cold winter sky. He missed. The snow flake landed on the tip of his nose, causing him to giggle as he stifled a sneeze.

The boy continued his journey until he reached the far side of the manure pit. He stood on the section of the gravel drive that covered a  concrete culvert, which was three feet in diameter, through which a small creek flowed. Now, there is one thing that is true of pretty much every boy, young, old, or ancient. They all love fire and water. And sometimes dirt. Scott was no exception.

He walked gingerly to the edge of the driveway and peered over the edge into the rippling water below. He could see the gray end of the culvert where it protruded from underneath the drive. The constant flow of water had eroded the creek bed creating a small pool. The surface of the pool rippled under the relentless flow of the creek while the rest of the pool was calm by comparison. The calmness disappeared a few feet away from the culvert as the creek shallowed and the pebbles and stones disturbed the flow in a mesmerizing manner. 

Scott kicked his rubber, booted toe into the windrow of snow at the edge of the drive and watched a chunk of snow tumble over the edge into the water. The resulting splash was rewarding enough in and of itself, but something else caused the boy to gasp. The snow hit the water and immediately changed from white, to gray , and eventually translucent until it seemed to disappear all together leaving only a shadow to be dispersed by the pebbles of the creek bed.

“Wow,” Scott whispered to himself. “That was cool.”

He nudged another chunk of snow over the edge of the drive and watch with nearly equal delight as it faded into the water below. The miniature Henning got down on his hands and knees and used both hands to persuade a much larger mass of snow to leave the relative safety of the driveway and plummet to it's watery grave. This time, the chunk was large enough that a translucent ball made it all the way out of the pool and tumbled and twisted across the pebbles and stones until it finally broke apart and disappeared entirely.

Excited by the improved results of his most recent experiment, the amateur scientist sought a larger specimen with which he might further improve his results. He found what he was looking for right next to the source spot of his last specimen and excitedly pushed it towards the creek, eager to witness the resulting splash and the subsequent disappearing act. The ball of snow pressed up against an old utility pole that was laying on it's side, partially covered by gravel, dirt , and snow. (The pole was used as a barrier to prevent the drive from eroding away and was chosen, not only for it's size and length, but also for it's resistance to decomposition thanks to the pitch that had been applied to the surface of the wood.) 

Scott grunted and groaned as he struggled to push the large ball of snow over the utility pole. Finally, the snow boulder slipped over the driveway barrier and splashed violently into the cold creek below. However, Scott was unable to appreciate the fabulous splash caused by it's collision with the surface of the water. The momentum caused by the sudden release of the snow boulder combined with the natural slickness of Scott's full body snow suit, had carried the child right over the barrier. He struggled against the inevitable to no avail and tumbled head over heels into the creek. The slight top heavy nature of his body had allowed his body to do a full somersault. He landed directly on his rump in the deepest part of the pool, causing a splash that dwarfed all previous splashes. 

Stunned by his sudden change in altitude, the boy sat there wide-eyed and unable to appreciate the literal ripple affects of his wet landing. Suddenly, as if someone had flipped a switch in his young mind, Scott scrambled to his feet and scurried up the steep embankment of the creek to the driveway. He stood on the gravel surface shivering as he debated whether to go back home or continue on to his grandparent's home. He looked towards the house trailer that his grandpa called home and quickly came to the conclusion that it was far to great a distance for him to travel in his present state. He turned on his heel and made a beeline for the white farm house from whence he had come.

He covered the distance between the creek bridge and the house much more efficiently than he had from the house to the bridge. One can only attribute this to the child's change in motivation.

“I need to get back home before I freeze to death,” he muttered to himself as he imagined all the water that had soaked into his snow suit suddenly freezing solid and stopping him in his tracks.

He burst through the back porch door and stopped, doubling over with his hands on his knees as he attempted to regain control of his breath and willed his shivering to stop. The wooden door that separated the back porch from the kitchen opened, revealing his surprised mother.

“What are you doing here?” she asked before her son's sodden condition registered. “Oh my goodness! What happened?”

“I fallded into the crick and I got all wet,” the soggy boy confessed as he choked back tears. “I didn't mean to. I slippded.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Christa comforted her second son as she stifled her own laughter. “Don't cry. Everything is fine. Let's just get you out of these cold, wet clothes in into a warm, comfy blanket.”

“Am I not going to go to see Grandpa anymore?” Scott asked as his mother helped him out of his soggy snow suit.

“I'm going to throw this in the dryer,” she answered reassuringly. “Once it's dry, you can try the trip again. Maybe this time, you could just stay away from the creek. I'm going to call Grandpa and let him know that you're going to be a little late.”

Scott nodded, grateful not to have lost his day with his grandfather, and wrapped himself in a blanket as he waited for his clothes to dry.

Lumber Milling

Scott gazed out the picture window in the kitchen as a pickup truck pulling a strange contraption made it's way up the driveway. The contraption in question was bright red and was impossible to miss as it glided past the snowy pasture beyond the gravel drive. 

“What is that thing?” he questioned out loud, not expecting an answer.

“That's a band saw, lumber mill,” his father responded unexpectedly from behind.

Scott started slightly at the surprise response. It always amazed the children how their father could walk up on them in almost any situation without them having a single clue that he was there. They had theorized very seriously over a couple of methods their father could employ to travel so soundlessly, but they could never settle on one that made sense. It had never occurred to any of the kids that their father's ability to 'sneak' up on them probably had more to do with their tendencies to get overly absorbed in whatever they were doing than anything else.

“That's John Herger,” Dale continued despite his second son's lack of attention. “Remember those logs we didn't cut into firewood?”

“The ones we drug out by the old heifer barn?” Scott clarified.

“Yup,” the older Henning confirmed. “Those are the ones. We're sawing them into lumber today. That's what Mr. Herger is here for. Look at the clock.”

Scott glanced at the green display on the family's electric stove. The time read 9:16.

“I want you to get dressed and head out to the heifer barn at 9:45,” Dale instructed. “We should have everything set up by then. We're going to need your help loading logs onto the band saw and stacking lumber. Make sure you wear your coveralls and don't forget your gloves. It's cold out there.”

Scott nodded as he reached for his coffee cup on the kitchen table. He was a little disappointed about not being able to continue reading the Hardy Boys mystery he'd begun the day before, but was interested in seeing how the lumber mill would work. He drank deeply of the now lukewarm liquid in his plain white mug as his older brother slipped into his coveralls and followed his dad through the back porch door. Scott sat at the kitchen table for a moment until his curiosity got the better of him.

“I don't think I'm going to wait until 9:45,” he commented to himself. “I wanna know what this band saw thing looks like.”

He pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his torso and stepped into a pair of dark blue coveralls. He donned a dark blue uniform jacket and checked the pockets. Gloves in the right, hat in the left, pocket knife in my pants pocket, he went through his check list in his head. He stepped into his steel toed, rubber muck boots and began the seemingly long journey to the heifer barn. The walk past the bank barn, the shop, the sugar camp, and the old oak tree only took a few minutes. 

The pickup truck was just pulling away from the red band saw as the young man approached the long, single level, heifer barn. (The barn was referred to as a heifer barn but had sat largely unused for the duration of the young Henning's lifetime.) Dale was standing by with a chain saw while Caleb leaned somewhat awkwardly on the handle of a large cant hook. (A cant hook is a tool used for rolling logs. A large, elongated hook is attached to heavy duty handle about a foot from the end. The handle would rest on the top of the log and the hook would dig into the underside of the log giving one the leverage and control required to roll the log by oneself.)

“Why do they call that thing a cant hook?” Scott asked of his older brother. “It actually makes it so you CAN move the log.”

“I'm not sure.” Caleb puzzled for a moment before answering his brothers serious question. “Maybe they call it that because you can't move the log without it.”

“Back when they first invented the cant hook, they used a lot of different words than we do now,” an unfamiliar voice chimed in from behind. The boys turned and saw John Herger who was just returning from parking his truck. “You know the end of the log that's split or too gnarly to saw?” The boys nodded. “They used to call that a cant. That's where the tool gets it's name.”

The boys nodded to each other, satisfied by the answer. The red machine was about twenty feet long. A large band saw was mounted on a track and sat with the blade at the level of a platform that stood about three feet off the ground. John took his place at the control end of the sawmill and grabbed two of several levers and and got to work. Five curved arms folded out until the ends of them were level with the ground. He pulled another lever and several straight arms pivoted up from the opposite side of the milling platform. Another lever caused the band saw assembly to raise and lower relative to the platform.

“Okay, Dale,” he commented to the elder Henning. “We're ready for a log.”

Dale nodded and picked up another cant hook. He directed his oldest son towards one end of a large poplar log and hooked his own cant hook around the other end. The hook gripped into the underside of the log while the protruding end of the handle laid across the top. Caleb copied his father with his own long handled tool. Dale gave a crisp nod and the two Hennings pulled their respective handles from their initial position parallel to the ground to perpendicular to the ground, walking forward as the log rolled towards the band saw. Their cant hooks disengaged from the log which free-rolled until it hit against the curved arms of the saw. They reengaged the hooks, rolled the log onto the arms and stood back. 

As John pulled a lever, the arms rose and rolled the log onto the platform. He flipped a switch and the big pulleys of the saw assembly whirred to life. The pitch of the noise lowered slightly as it sliced into the end of the log. Sawdust flew from a discharge shoot on the barn side of the saw as the blade glided through the log until it emerged from the other end. The saw assembly raised and flew back to it's starting position. Dale and Caleb removed the rounded slab from the log and tossed it aside as the another arm rose up from underneath the platform. A protruding tooth from the arm pressed up against the the log. John pulled a lever and the tooth moved up the arm causing the log to roll ninety degrees. Another pair of arms rose and pushed the log against the arms on the far side of the platform. The band saw began another pass perpendicular to the first. The resulting plank was added to the brand new slab pile. 

The saw assembly dropped an inch and the blade cut into the end of the log as the arms held the log in place. Caleb and Dale pulled the resulting plank from it's place and laid it across the curved arms as the blade began another. Before long, the entire log was back on the curved arms in the form of live edge planks, minus the rounded slabs, of course. They put the planks back on the platform, on edge this time. The band saw made a pass resulting in several one inch sticks with bark edges.

“Put those aside,” John directed. “You'll need those to stick your lumber pile for drying.”

The boys did just that as their father looked on. He directed Caleb to lay them out on the slanted concrete floor of the old barn while he and Scott flipped the planks to be milled on the other edge. They removed the sticks and the planks with square edges. The boys laid out the planks on the sticks in the barn as John squared the rest of the planks. 

The continued their work through the rest of the afternoon. The boys spent most of the time sticking and stacking the lumber, sorting the boards by thickness and length as directed by their father. The long pile of sawdust beside the mill grew as the sun worked it's way across the cold, winter's sky. Fluffy white snow flakes fell gently from the sky as the four men worked. They took a break for lunch and went right back to work. Little by little, the log pile shrank and the slab pile grew. The stacks of lumber in the barn rose towards the exposed trusses as a testament to their labor. 

Finally, after hours of work, the lumber crew was finished. John pack up his mill and hooked it back up to his pickup truck. Dale got into the cab with John. The boys climbed into the bed of the pickup truck at John's direction. They sat on the tailgate of the truck with their feet dangling. They watched the the saw dust blow off the mill in the early evening breeze. An orange light washed across the snowy field hill to the east as the sun set on a fruitful day for the Henning family.

Snow Fort Frolicking

Scott trudged through twelve inches of freshly fallen snow as he worked to complete his chores. He had just finished bottle feeding the youngest calves and was making his way to the heifer barn to feed the heifers. Caleb and Kelsey were milking the family's forty head herd while Luke stocked the catwalk above the bunk with square bales. As the children worked in the barns, their father worked to clear the driveway of snow. School had been canceled, but the milk truck was still expected to come for pickup so the snow on the drive had to go. 

Dale was using the farm's red and white, Gehl, skid loader with the bucket on the front to scrape the snow to the edge of the driveway and pile it up into huge mounds. He would disappear down the driveway, pushing pile of the white and fluffy obstruction and return a few minutes later pushing a different pile. This cycle continued until the drive was clear. Then he got to work on the gravel areas around the barns. The children finished their cores and gathered in the kitchen for crock pot oatmeal as their father carried on. 

Finally, Dale joined the rest of his family in the warmth of the white farmhouse where he availed himself of the oatmeal and the coffee and retired to his seat in the living room to warm up under his large orange and brown afghan. The children milled around in the kitchen discussing the ever important issue of what they were going to do with their unexpected day off from school. 

“Before you kids make any big plans for the day,” Christa interjected. “Do you guys all have your homework from yesterday done? Just because you don't have school today, doesn't mean it won't be due tomorrow.”

There was a small pause as the five kids each ran through a mental checklist of their classes and the assignments that were due before thy all concluded that they had, in fact, gotten all their homework done the evening before.

“Okay, good,” their mother responded with visible satisfaction. “You guys are free to go then.”

With that, the kids decided to go play outside for a little bit while the snow was still fresh. They all got bundled up in their coveralls, hoodies, and coats and made their way outside. They stood on the sidewalk in front of the house and took in the scenery before them. 

The red bank barn stood before them, shedding the snow from it's roof little by little as the aluminum warmed slowly in the winter sun. A few cows milled around in the barnyard, starting slightly from time to time as the barn roof's payload plummeted to the concrete around them. The wind blew snow off of the top of the blue Harvestore silos, creating the illusion that it was still snowing, but only around the barn and the shop. A black and white barn cat stood in front of the lean-to outside the milkhouse, puzzling over the dilemma of how to get across the large windrow of snow that stood in it's way. Finally, it attempted a leap and landed up to it's belly in the snow on the other side. It struggled through to the cat dish where six or seven other cats of varying sizes and color patters stood drinking the still warm milk from that mornings milking.

“Whoa,” Luke interrupted the silence. “Look at those piles of snow.”

“Yeah,” Caleb concurred. “The one up by the bunker is probably the biggest pile I've ever seen.”

With that comment, the three boys made their way towards the bunker while the girls hung back in the yard with a couple of sleds. The bunker was a large trough about twelve feet wide and thirty feet long. The boundaries of the trough were the large shale bank on the west side and a large, earthen mound on the east side, while both ends remained open. The floor of the bunker was concrete. It had originally been built for storing silage for feeding the family herd. After a few years, it's purpose shifted from storing silage to storing sawdust for bedding.

The pile of snow in question, stood well above the five foot bunker mound and extended at least ten feet out. The boys stood on the bunker mound for a few moments until Scott broke the silence.

“Just think of the snow fort we could dig out of this thing.”

“No kidding,” Caleb replied. “We could have a regular igloo, probably with rooms and everything.”

“We need some shovels,” Luke nodded.

The three snow fort technicians made their way to the upper level of the bank barn in search of shovels. They found what they were looking for in the old granary. They returned to their newly designated construction site and got to work. They started digging in the top end, at the level of the bunker wall and worked their way down. Caleb was the primary digger . He dug his way into the mound as Scott and Luke cleared the debris way from the opening. Eventually, Caleb got deep enough into the developing structure that he sent his youngest brother after a smaller shovel. Luke returned with a pair of fold out army shovels the boys had gotten from the Surplus Junk Store (that really was the name of the store.) 

After the shovel swap, the work went a lot slower. Caleb dug with the army shovel and piled the snow onto the much larger, aluminum grain shovel. When he gave Scott the go ahead, the second son would pull the grain shovel out and give the handle to Luke so that he could pull it away and dump the payload. In the meantime, Scott would push a second grain shovel into the hole for his older brother to fill. The work continued in this shovel brigade manner until Caleb tossed the army shovel out.

“There,” he declared. “I think we're done. Anymore digging, and it might cave in. you guys should come in and check it out.”

“Is there enough room for all of us in there?” Luke inquired of the master digger.

“You bet,” the oldest brother replied confidently. “I've got two separate wings down here.”

And so he had. The younger brothers slid down into the snow fort on their rears and looked around. The distance between the floor of the structure and the ceiling was about three feet. A three foot long tunnel led into a room that measured about four feet deep and seven feet long and was centered on the entrance. Caleb sat in the north wing as Scott made his way into the south wing. Luke sat in the middle looking back and forth between the smiling faces of his older brothers.

“This is really cool,” he said with matching enthusiasm.

“Of course it's cool,” Scott replied with a chuckle. “It's snow. Snow has to be cool in order to be snow.”

“You know what I mean, Scott,” Luke laughed. “I'm really surprised that it feels so warm in here.”

“That's because snow is really good at holding heat in,” Caleb replied with the look of a seasoned professor on his face. “It's holding our body heat in. If we blocked the doorway, it would get really warm in here.”

“Yeah, but we're not going to do that,” Scott cut in as he looked at his wristwatch. “It's almost lunchtime, I think. We should probably head back to the house.”

“Good call,” Caleb responded as he verified the time. “We'll bring the girls out later to check it out.”

The boys crawled out of the snow fort and began the pilgrimage to the house. They went in through the basement and shed their outer layers before walking up the stairs into the kitchen, dropping their boots on the shelf as they passed.

“So,” Christa greeted her boys as she ladled hot chocolate from a pan into mugs for the girls. “What did you boys do with your morning?”

“We made an igloo!” Luke exclaimed. “It's up by the bunker and it's awesome!”

“Well, you probably need some hot chocolate to warm you up after all that cold work,” their mother replied as she filled three more mugs. “Lunch will be ready in a few minutes.”

The Henning children sat contentedly around the kitchen table, enjoying their warm reward for a morning well utilized.

Cold Awakenings

Scott sleepily pulled the covers under his chin as he fought the urge to drift happily back to dreamland. He didn't fight very hard. After a few moments he opened his eyes again and blinked against the morning light. He thought for a few seconds, wondering why it was so light outside. It wasn't usually light until after six or seven o'clock during the winter. He groggily turned towards his alarm clock. The time of 7:26 was clearly displayed in red, block letters.

An intense feeling of panic swept through the thirteen-year-old's chest as he power-rolled out of the lower bunk of the bed. He frantically threw his clothes on, all the time wondering how his family could have let him sleep so long and who was doing his barn chores if he was still in bed. He slipped his belt through the belt loops on his uniform pants as he barreled down the stairs. He opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and careened through the empty living room, towards the basement stairway door. He grabbed his boots from the shelf, not noticing how many boots were still there, and grabbed his blue coveralls from a nail protruding from a large post. 

He flew by the kitchen table and frantically attempted to slip into his coveralls, but found it hard to do so in his frenzied state.

“Scotty,” a voice interrupted the young man. “What are you doing?”

Scott stopped and looked around, surprised by the interruption. He had thought he was alone. As he turned towards the source of the voice, he noticed that he was actually pretty cold. He turned and looked across the kitchen table, towards the stove. Huddled around the open oven were his four siblings and his mother. They were sitting on a bench with their backs to Scott and their feet propped up on the open, oven door with a folded towel acting as a barrier between their feet and the door. The element in the bottom of the oven glowed orange and cast a strange light against the black interior of the electric oven.

“W-w-what is going on?” Scott shivered. “Why is it so cold in here? Am I in trouble for sleeping in?”

Christa smiled and shook her head as she answered. “You're not in trouble, sweetie,” She began. “You really should put on a sweatshirt, though. When your father and I woke up this morning, it was only forty-three degrees in the house. The gas went out last night. He tried to pull the pin but there wasn't enough pressure yet. He told me to let you guys stay in bed where it was warm. He should be finishing the chores soon enough.”

Scott nodded his head in understanding as he heaved a sigh of relief. The old farmhouse was heated with natural gas that was generated by an oil well on the property. This was good financially because the gas was provided to the family at no monetary cost. That's not to say there was no cost at all. The family paid for the free gas with mornings like this one. The gas pressure would occasionally drop below operating pressure and shut off over night. This would result in some cold awakenings until the pressure would build enough to fire their furnace. Until then, the family usually built a fire in the wood stove in the basement and turned the oven on to warm up the kitchen. The “pin” was the pressure regulator reset. Once the pressure built up to operating levels, someone would unscrew the cap and pull the pin with a pair of pliers to allow gas to flow back into the furnace.

Scott pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his torso and poured himself a cup of coffee. Rather than joining the family oven huddle, he grabbed a blanket and a book and made himself comfortable on the couch. As he read, he occasionally pushed his top lip out as far as it would go so as to resemble that of a monkey and exhaled through his nose. After a while, Kelsey came in and interrupted her brothers strange facial exercises.

“What in the world are you doing with your face?” she asked, her voice thick with ridicule.

“Um,” Scott stammered, surprised by the sudden interruption. “I'm warming up my nose. When I do that with my lip and breathe out through my nose, the air from my nose warms it up.”

“What?” Kelsey questioned with no small amount of uncertainty. “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.”

“Don't knock it 'til you try it,” Scott replied as he turned back to his book.

“Wait,” his sister interrupted him again as she scrunched her upper lip against her nose and exhaled. “It does warm my nose up!”

“I told you,” Scott replied across the top of his Great Illustrated Classic. 

“Hey guys! Check this out!” Kelsey called out as she returned to the relative warmth of the kitchen stove.

She was in the middle of her nose warming instructions to the rest of the family when the head of the household walked through the kitchen. Dale stepped deliberately from one rug to the next, so as to keep the snow from his boots off of the linoleum floor, on his way to the basement. He was in the basement for about a minute before his family heard the furnace fan kick on and felt the warm air flowing from the registers. Cries of joy erupted from the kitchen and the living room as he returned to the ground level. He kicked his boots off at the top step and pulled his long, white, tube socks back up to his knees. He walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch, still wearing his coat.

“Well,” he announced to his frigid family. “We should be alright for the rest of the day at least.”

Strategic Snow Preservation Endeavors

The Henning children groggily made their way downstairs one by one. Their wake-up call had been their fathers booming voice reverberating off the walls of the stairway and the upstairs hall. They knew better than to wait for a second call. Their fingers brushed the uneven, horsehair plaster wall of the stairway as they slowly made the pilgrimage from the warmth of their beds to the warmth of the family's twenty cup, percolator coffee pot. Kelsey was the first to fill her mug and Scott was the last. Kerry stayed in bed. At the young age of seven, her duties were limited to the house and the daylight hours. 

 

Caleb took his cup of coffee into the living room where his father sat sipping his morning brew and paging through one of the white and red encyclopedias by the light of the tarnished brass floor lamp. Scott, Kelsey, and Luke took their morning kick-starters at the kitchen tables. Scott sat in one of the oak chairs that were normally reserved for his parents. Kelsey took the other, while Luke sat on one of the cherry benches that Grandpa Stucky had made. All three sipped their coffee and stared absent mindedly out the large picture window at the back yard and the long driveway. After a few moments, Kelsey broke the silence. 

“Hey,” she began, interrupting herself with a yawn. “It snowed last light. A lot, I think.”

Scott and Luke willed their eyes to focus in the darkness of the early morning and eventually nodded in agreement. Scott took a generous sip of his coffee and addressed his brother and sister.

“Remember when we got that big snow a couple of weeks ago?” Kelsey and Luke nodded. “Remember how we all ran all over it and then it looked really bad and some of it started melting?” His siblings nodded. “It seems that all the snow we touch gets ruined. Maybe we should be more careful.”

“Yeah,” Kelsey agreed as her sleepiness began to wane. “We should only walk on certain parts of the yard so that the snow lasts longer.”

“But how will we know where to walk?” Luke asked with a yawn.

Nobody said anything for a few moments. The brains of the three children were hardly running on all cylinders at six o'clock in the morning. Scott finished his first cup of coffee and went back for more. He opened the fridge and added some cream off the top of the gallon of milk until his coffee took on the desired color. The milk in the fridge was raw milk from the barn. The cream separated overnight to the top and made for a rich cup of coffee in the morning.

“What if we made a map?” Kelsey suggested.

Scott and Luke glanced at each other and nodded as Kelsey ran to her book bag for some notebook paper. She returned shortly and laid out a piece of paper on the table and handed Scott a pencil.

“Here,” she said. “You're the artist.”

Scott took the pencil with some pride even though he wasn't a very good artist at all. He had a couple of sketchbooks filled with rudimentary, heavily-lined, drawings of houses, three dimensional shapes, and any number of animals but none of it could really be considered art. He drew a disproportionate, box plus sign in the middle of the page.

“That's the house,” he declared as he continued to draw. “This is the calf barn, here is the heifer barn, and that is the big barn. This is the fence.”

His younger siblings examined his rough map and agreed that is was accurate.

“So, obviously, we have to walk from the house to all the barns,” Scott began. “So we'll put a path here, here, and here.” 

He drew a line from the house to all three barns. Luke and Kelsey nodded in agreement.

“You have to walk from the big barn to the calf barn for chores, right?” Kelsey questioned. “You need a path for that. You should put it right against the fence.”

“What about sledding?” Luke wondered. “Are we going to be able to do that?”

“Oh, yes!” Scott declared. “This is the sledding hill right here. We'll have a sledding path right here because it's the steepest part that doesn't have a drop off at the end and we'll walk up right next to it. We'll just keep it to that.”

The three children continued in this manner, planning and plotting, drawing and adjusting until the were certain that they had planned for every contingency. Caleb came through the kitchen for a coffee refill and asked his younger siblings what they were doing. They made their oldest brother aware of the snow preservation measures they had put into place. He glance at the map, nodded his head, and declared that it would never last. Nevertheless, he promised to adhere to the proposed directive until it had been disregarded by another member of the family. Finally, it was time to begin their morning chores.

Kelsey helped their father in the milking parlor. Caleb worked on mixing feed for the cows. Luke and Scott fed calves and heifers. They were all extremely careful to stick to the approved snow routes. Finally, the chores were done and the cross-generational crew made their way to the house for breakfast. They enjoyed their scrambled eggs and sausage and dressed for a few hours of fun in the snow.

Kerry was the first one out the door. Before anyone had a chance to brief her on their previously agreed upon snow preservation measure, she tore down the sidewalk and leaped from the approved route into the fluffy snow. As her siblings cried out in dismay, Kerry rolled on her back and began to fan her arms and legs back and forth.

“Look at me, guys!” she cried with unadulterated delight. “I'm making a snow angel!”

The other four children just stood on the approved path, their mouths agape, sled strings in hand, and stared as their mother stifled laughter from the back porch door. The older siblings glanced at each other as the full weight of their sisters actions settled in their minds. Finally, they shrugged their shoulders, dropped the sled strings, and followed Kerry's lead. They threw their preparation to the wind and joined in the angel making endeavors of their youngest sister. They spent the next couple of hours sled riding , snowball fighting, and snow fort building until they were summoned back to the house for lunch.

“Maybe next time,” Kelsey said with conviction as they made their way up the sidewalk.

“Or,” Scott countered. “Maybe not.”