It was a crusty-snow morning as my dog Mutt and I walked up to Eddie’s house to see what he was up to. The snow was so loud under my boots and her paws that it blotted out the sounds of the winter birds chirping and the cracking and popping of trees in the woods.
The snow was so crusty it was hard for me to even make tracks in it.
But I plodded up the road sinking my neck into the collar of my coat to keep out the cold.
Eddie was always up to something…and today seemed to be that kind of day.
When we turned the corner down his driveway, I could hear the sounds of metal bumping against crunching snow coming from behind the house.
I didn’t even stop to knock on the door, I just followed the cleared path on the side of the garage where it appeared something huge had been dragged.
When we turned the corner, there was Eddie toting an old pram boat up a small hill with some ropes.
I broke into a jog and caught up to him to get a grip on the rope.
Mutt jumped and danced with excitement all around us as we wrapped the rope from tree to tree using them as an Adiron-dack pulley system to force the boat to the top of the hill.
“How fast do ya think it will go?” I asked.
“Well, I think if we can get by that one beech tree there, we can make it clear of the bunk house. And once we get a good packed path, who knows?” he said.
He seemed pretty clear about the run out, but I was sure we would never avoid that big tree.
When we got the boat all set and free from the tow ropes we decided we needed to wax the bottom.
With all our might we rolled the boat over and pushed off the snow.
Then, using the old candles Eddie had stashed in his pocket we rubbed the surface until there was nothing left of the candles but waxy stubs.
My mitten stuck to the metal in a couple places due to the cold, otherwise we managed to get a pretty thick coat of red, blue and green wax on our craft.
As we flipped the boat over into launching position, Eddie asked, “Do ya want the front or back?”
“I thought I would just watch you take the first run since it will be slow making that first track,” I said.
“Naw, come on. Get in!” he said as we both scrambled into the boat.
We rocked our eight-year-old bodies forward until the pram decided to bound down the hill.
We missed the big tree before we even knew it was there and shot past the place we thought we would stop.
Then we crashed into a mess of small spruce, losing our seats and clinging to spruce branches as if they were a safety net.
“I love this crusty snow!” Eddie yelled as we tried to pry ourselves from the landing area.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com