Survival Mystery a la Snowmagedon

Well, well. Take a guess at what happened here.


I'll lead you through this one. I wanted to go up the hill in the backyard to see how many limbs broke off the white pine.

You can't walk easily in the yard because with each step you take you just post hole down two feet. So I strapped on the snowshoes.


I tried trekking straight up the hill but my feet kept landing sideways in the snow. I probably went up about a foot per minute. My heartbeat went aerobic in just a few steps.


I realized that I needed to walk diagonally up the hill.


Somewhere along the way I lost my hat. I didn't know at the time because I had on a face mask under the hat and didn't feel it when it flew off.


Walking on the level ground on the top of the hill was so easy, I left the trekking poles behind. I wanted to photograph the tree and these were in the way.


I got a few shots of the tree...and then....


TIMBER!!! Yeah, me, not the tree. I fell down.


For about 30 seconds I thought it was funny. I took these shots to show my predicament. Little did I know.

At this point I didn't realize that I had lost my cute little pink hat that I knitted my very own self.
I thought I'd be popping right back up after this shot.

Let me just say that what followed was not a pretty sight. Every time that I tried to push myself off the "ground" to get up, my arm sank two feet down in the snow. Having left the trekking poles 20 feet away, getting up was no easy task. The word "wallow" comes to mind.

I figured the best I could do was to take off the snowshoes and post hole my way back to the house. Unfortunately, I could barely maneuver my feet around with these giant planks on my feet. I had to contort myself just to reach the clasps. Then I discovered that the clasps were all frozen.

I didn't get to the point of crying, but gnawing off my legs at the knee seemed like an option. I looked around to see if any neighbors were looking. They weren't. YEA! but then again...there was no one around to rescue me.

I was envisioning the episodes I'd seen of "Survivorman" in the arctic, to see if I could recall what he might do in this situation. All I could remember was that maybe he found some dead moose carcus to gnaw on to keep him alive. That didn't seem applicable.

Eventually I contorted myself enough to wiggle my feet out. I have no idea how long it took to accomplish this, but it really felt like forever.


I post holed my way across the yard and down the hill; gathered my lost and discarded gear; and walked defeated back into the house.

Alive. = )