lw
We were hiking on Saturday and talk naturally turned to the awful winter we've had.
"It's bad," one of our group piped. "But it's nothing like The Winter of '79."
How true. This winter has been like Fiji in February compared to The Winter of '79.
I swear on a stack of comic books there was snow on the ground from Thanksgiving to Easter. That winter, my roommate Hog Ears and I were holed up in our backwoods bachelor cabin, looking out the window at a raging blizzard almost every day.
Our full-time job was cutting enough firewood to keep the fireplace and a wood stove burning all the live-long day and night. That was fine since both of us were laid off from our summer jobs at the state park. We had time on our mittens and it was too snowy to go anywhere.
There was plenty of wood to cut, which was good, because it was warmer in Nome than the Ozarks during The Winter of '79.
This year the flu is going around. In The Winter of '79 it was cabin fever. Hog Ears and I caught it bad. It's a wonder we didn't kill each other before spring finally arrived, in July that year.
Hog Ears and I should get written up in a medical journal. That winter we found out cabin fever could be cured by getting a shot. Hog Ears would take his rifle into the woods in the morning. On almost every trip he'd get a shot at a squirrel. About lunchtime, Hog Ears would come home dragging his snow-covered boots into the cabin. I'd go out after squirrels in the afternoon and normally get a shot myself. At night by the fireplace we'd swap hunting stories.
Squirrel hunting saved our hides. Now and then we'd fix a pot of squirrel stew in the slow cooker and wonder when it would quit snowing.
There's one phenomenon I don't think I've seen since The Winter of '79. When things finally thawed out, the bottom fell out of every gravel road.
For whatever reason, the rural routes around our cabin and all over the county became quagmires of pebbly mud that swallowed cars like quicksand. It was the darndest thing you ever saw and that's what everybody called it, the bottom falling out.
Hog Ears' old Chevy Suburban sank up to its axles right there in our driveway. You'd be driving along in the country and, all of a sudden, the road ahead was just a mud hole as long as a football field.
You had to turn around and find another route, like there was a flash flood. Vehicles were stranded everywhere, askew and stuck in the muck.
Now Hog Ears lives in Alaska and I know why. He was seeking a milder climate. This chilly little winter is a gentle reminder of what could have been. Here's hoping we never have an ice storm like January 2009, or another winter like the one in 1979.
FLIP PUTTHOFF IS OUTDOORS EDITOR FOR NWA MEDIA. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @NWAFLIP.
Outdoors on 03/06/2014