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.”