Compass in a Snow Storm

Finding my Joy

My love for snow has been the thread that has run through the arc of my life, bringing a solemn joy and the feeling that everything would be alright. It started as an adolescent; I was confused and lonely. Like many early teens, I felt like I didn’t belong. Team sports were my nemesis. My father loved his work and dreamt of giving his children everything he didn’t have growing up in Central Pennsylvania. I longed for a connection to something. Something that made me feel like I knew I was headed in the right direction. Most teenagers haven’t quite figured out how to read, let alone find, their personal compass. In 1972, I turned thirteen, and for Christmas, I found a Glenfield Marlin .22 rifle leaning against the wall beside the tree. Outside the big bay window, it was snowing. Hard. Something awakened my heart. When I turned fifteen, my father asked me if I wanted to go hunting where he had grown up. It was the Opening Weekend of deer season in PA. We packed the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with the moonroof, laying the back seats down to make a traveling bed, complete with a mattress, pillows, and sleeping bags. The plan was to leave at 2:00 am for the six-hour drive from the small steel town to Clearfield County. As I lay in bed at home, watching the snow come down in perilously large flakes in the porch light. At midnight, I tiptoed up to my parents’ bedroom and gingerly knocked on the door, concerned that I might be waking the bear. “Dad? Dad? I think we should leave soon. The snow is coming down hard, and it’s gonna take us a lot longer to get to Clearfield.” “Okay, son. Meet me in the garage.” We headed down the main roads, then veered off onto one of the back roads to head North toward Interstate 80 East. The snow had covered the roads and was accumulating at two inches an hour. I lay in the back watching the snow in the interstate lights, making angelic pillars of flakes as they floated down to the road. My father was listening to his favorite country station, WWVA, out of Wheeling, West Virginia. It played all the songs from his childhood. Hank Williams. Merle Haggard, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Buck Owens, and the “new guy,” Willie Nelson.

Willie has a way of singing from the deepest caverns of the heart, and his song, “Hands On The Wheel,” hit me in a way that brought me a deep sense of relief that I had found true North on my heart’s compass. As the song played, I watched my father’s hands firmly but gently grasping the steering wheel. Every time the station wagon began to slip sideways, his grip stayed relaxed but firm as he counter-corrected the rear wheel drive. As long as he had his hands on the wheel, we were going to be alright. My father sang along with Willie. He left the driver’s side window cracked so he could reach out every few minutes to slap the windshield wiper when it clumped up with the sticky white flakes. Eight hours later, we arrived at a deer camp where his childhood friends holed up like a bunch of old Western renegades. He slammed the Vista Cruiser through a three-foot drift and came to an abrupt stop in front of the old wooden door leading to the last bastion of the “Good Old Boys” clubhouse.

In the morning, we woke to the smell of coffee, bacon, and woodsmoke. After breakfast, plans were made where each of the men would hunt. The snow was now two feet deep. My Dad said, “I know just where to go. We’ll head down into the ravine under the pines, where the deer will want to bed down. I was excited that I might see my first buck, but as we plowed our way down onto the side of the ravine, pushing through the mountain laurel, it hit me. This was really the first time I had my father all to myself. Together, we were plodding through the snow left from an epic storm. As we stood leaning against an old pine, watching the groaning branches bending from the weight of the heavy snow, we could hear it dropping its burden in irregular patterns. Our eyes were straining to see down to the bottom of the ravine that the deer would use as a funnel to track toward their bedding area. That moment was the first time that I had experienced true joy and a feeling of belonging. The snow brought me the greatest gift of all – a true connection to my father and the recognition that I belonged right where I stood.

The moment stayed with me, and I began dreaming about living in a place like this. The following summer, I was given the opportunity to attend Vermont Academy, in the southern part of the state. I jumped at the chance. I had been reading deer hunting articles in Field & Stream and Outdoor Life about the legendary Benoits, who had been named as “possibly the best deer hunters in the country.” I bought the same rifle they used, a Remington 760 Gamemaster in 30.06, and put a Redfield Widefield scope on the barrel. I held the dream close to my heart and the following year, convinced my family to move to the Green Mountain State. My siblings did not appreciate it much. But now my father and I could walk out the front door, and trudge through the legendary Vermont woods to a tree stand we built on the side of Roundtop. It was to be the year I would get my first buck. With my father present, after harvesting the healthy four-pointer, we began the drag home, about a half mile. As we passed the dairy barn, the radio inside was playing John Denver’s “Back Home Again.” As twilight faded over the mountains, it began to snow. Every hundred yards the snow came down harder. The last pull was up the steep driveway. Without the snow, it would not have been possible. Arriving at the back door, we were met with a mixed reaction. No one understood this bond we’d formed.

Many years later, as my father was aging toward his golden years, he was still able to make it to a camp that I had managed to acquire, having made friends with several real Vermonters. I invited him to join my new friends at “our camp.” The night we headed up the mountain, a few errant flakes floated down and landed on the window of my truck. By the time we pulled onto the fourth-class logging road, we were plowing through a heavy foot of the “white gold” that Vermonters with snowplows know as “supplemental income.” Much like my memories of hunting in PA, we spent the weekend walking through the hallways of pines, branches draped in heavy white pillows hanging over the road.

Tonight, I was taking a venison neck roast dinner to a friend of mine. As I left my house, it began to snow. Gently at first. More like a mixture of snow and rain. Headed north down the back road to his house, it turned. Big, Fat. Flakes. The kind that clings to the wiper blades. I delivered the stew and told him that I needed to get going because the snow was piling up. As I turned out of his driveway, I realized that this was our first significant storm of the year. I aimed the car down the tire tracks of the back road. I turned on my favorite radio station. Willie was singing “Hands On The Wheel.” I felt my father beside me. The snow was pounding the windshield. I rolled down the window, grabbed the wiper, and slapped it down to shake off the sticky flakes. With my hands on the wheel, I was sure that I would make it home. Where I belong.