THE NARRATIVE ARC
Like Sentinels the Coyotes Watched Us
It was a white out as we crept along
Once the wind picks up and the inevitable snow drifts form, driving becomes a slow crawl. Even the experienced Michigan road crews can just barely keep up with their snowplows.
“Tom, I need for you to drive out to the airport to pick up a group of adventure writers and take them out to the ranch. There are several outdoor magazines being represented, including Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. They’re doing a write-up on the ranch. Their plane arrives in about a half-hour.”
My boss’s call caught me by surprise.
They hired me as night manager for the 250 room Traverse Bay Inn in downtown Traverse City, Michigan, just two months before this night. My new boss along with the staff and employees, were still getting to know one another. This period still qualified as the ‘honeymoon’ period of my employment.
“Oh sure, Jack.” I quickly responded.
“If you go to the front desk and ask Sam to give you the camper keys. You may have seen it parked out at the back end of the parking lot annex.” In fact, there were always several campers parked there, I didn’t know which. They were all huge.
“Yeah, okay Jack, so Sam’s got the keys. I guess I’d better get going, as it looks like that snow isn’t letting up.”
The thought that presented itself was that I’d driven nothing larger than my VW beetle; a pick-up once or twice in summer jobs. I wasn’t about to share my growing concern about driving a camper in the middle of winter with Jack.
Jack was a WW-2 vet, piloted P-51 Mustangs in combat. You didn’t tell this kind of man that you weren’t too sure about driving a camper. After all, I was a young man, not too long out of university, plus it was part of my youthful fiber to feel quite invincible. Often times, foolishly so. There was nothing I couldn’t do. Or so I thought.
Sam handed me the keys over the front desk. “Hey Mr. Jacobson, have you driven campers in the snow? I know you’re from the south. Just wondering. You’re probably going to want to take it pretty slow.”
“No problem Sam, thanks. Hey, could you give me those road instructions again? Last time I went out there was right after I came to work here.” Sam gave me the detailed rundown again, and I left.
“Mr. Jacobson, remember there are no street lights out there,” Sam called out, “So watch for deer and the drifts are building and they’re gonna hide the bad shoulders that road has.”
Sitting in the driver’s seat was like being in a cocoon or a spaceship cockpit. Jack’s camper was a little over thirty-eight feet, not the largest, but big by anyone’s standards.
The wind was blowing steadily. A nearby flagpole clanged, like an alarm. The parking lot lighting seemed to move and sway with the powerful gusts.
The snow swirled everywhere like swirling dust devils higher than the light poles. It surprised me to see that even in the parking lot, around recently parked guests’ cars, the drifts had already accumulated, their beautiful and growing free-form waves seemed to respond to unseen hands shaping them into ever-growing mounds.
At that hour, there was very little traffic and the streets to the municipal airport just outside of town were empty. I noticed the big snowplow trucks were out busily working at keeping the roads clear, as though showing that the worst was yet to come.
The airport looked abandoned, so parking right up close to the small city terminal was easy. I assured myself that this would not be a problem.
The group of mostly young adventure writers was all huddled in seating in front of the airline counters. There were fifteen. They all wore expensive hiking and cold-weather gear. Some of them were not enjoying the wind blowing through the airport, icy cold. Not unreasonably, I expected to find a hardier-looking bunch.
“Hi everyone.” I introduced myself and asked them to grab their gear and to follow me out to the camper. The small talk was about the scary and bumpy landing they’d just experienced. As we approached the long camper, one of the older guys came up next to me and asked,” So you’re experienced at driving something this big in blizzard conditions? I have a thirty-foot GMC and you couldn’t pay me to drive in this soup. You certainly have my respect.”
Coming from a grizzled guy like him made me wonder if maybe I’d bit off too much.
This was really the first time that I questioned the wisdom of taking this forty-five minute trip into the deep Michigan forests. Our destination was a ranch that was converted by the hotel into a branch operation and was jokingly referred to as our dude ranch. The principal activities during the winter were cross-country skiing, horse riding, sled dogging or mushing hiking, ice fishing, skijoring.
Skijoring, the sport of being pulled through the snow on skis by a dog, is a Scandinavian import. Dog sledding was popular for those with the skills to handle the sleds. Drinking lots of spiced warmed wine, many beers, morning, noon and night were de rigueur at the ranch in front of a roaring fireplace made of huge flagstones.
They loaded the camper up. The group, mostly men, several women, all were quite talkative as they settled in; I noticed that behind me I had a bug-eyed audience staring out the wide windshield, keenly interested in how I was going to drive through this blizzard.
At the start, there were plenty of cameras taking pictures.
“You Michiganders are a brave bunch to drive around in this stuff. The drifts and falling snow take me back to base camp of Everest, no kidding.” Said one of the more grizzled-looking participants. “So how long have you been driving one of these things, anyway?” There was nervous laughter.
“This is my first time.” I think it was at that moment I realized I’d taken on a challenge that would test my inner strength as a person.
The camper fell silent, and everyone could only hear the muffled roar of the engine and the powerful heaters pushing out hot air, trying to keep everyone warm.
“Where are you from?” The same guy asked.
“I’m from Guatemala. We don’t have snow there.”
This started an uproar. One lady seemed miffed at having to go with such an inexperienced driver.
“Oh hell, for Christ’s sake, settle down,” One of the older men jumped in. “You kids act as though you’ve never done anything risky in your lives, and you know that’s not true. Let the young man drive in peace.”
“So you guys are writers of outdoor adventure magazines, right?” I attempted to move the subject from the fear of dying on the road to some other thing.
A young man offered that they were mostly mountain climbers, writers.
It was then I volunteered that in Guatemala and Nicaragua, El Salvador, I’d climbed many volcanoes. It was as though none of the horrific storm outside mattered anymore. One of the young ladies moved to sit just behind me. “Please tell me about the volcanoes because my magazine is planning a trip to Central America to climb several of the volcanoes. Have you ever seen them erupt?”
“Oh sure, I climbed one in Guatemala called Fuego (Fire), you know, and me and my climbing buddies at the time weren’t aware that this volcano was very active and blew its top almost daily.”
In what seemed a few moments we had come together. It was clear to all of us that being out here on this dark road surrounded by Michigan forest was not the smartest thing. There was no turning around as the narrow road and deep snow and invisible shoulder made such a maneuver almost impossible.
Almost halfway to the ranch, we saw eight or more coyotes standing on the side of the road, in the drift. They just watched us as we went by. One guy said he’d seen that in deep snow out west in the Rocky Mountains. He said that their guide explained that when coyotes feel the cold or their den may have caved in with snow, they will behave in unusual ways.
The group, realizing the situation we were in, gamely took part in watching the road ahead, calling out if high drifts or sharp turns were coming up. One time, we skidded over twenty yards when a small group of deer passed right in front of us.
At one point, ice started building up on the windshield, making visibility almost zero. To my pleasant surprise, several on the team offered to jump out and scrape it off.
“You’re going good Tom, just keep it just as you are.” I felt bolstered by the way the team all joined in.
Amazingly, we didn’t slide off track and before long up ahead we saw the ranch compound, the outer buildings all lit up by windblown sodium lamps. An eerie sight as if coming in from a ride in a moon rover arriving at our base barely visible in all the flying moon dust. Outside in the thick snow, crystals as large as silver dollars landing on his head stood BJ or ‘Sarge’ the ranch manager.
The wind swirled about us and off in the nearby darkness, the sledding huskies howled mournfully into the night from their insulated housing. Somewhere a wooden, open window slammed repeatedly in the wind.
“My hats off to you, Tom, I can only imagine what the drive was like out here in this mess. I mean, do they even have snow where you’re from, Mexico was it?” He laughed at his joking. BJ offered me a room for the night, but I needed to get back.
“All good BJ, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to turn right around and get back to Traverse before this gets so that I can’t drive.” One of the lady adventurers placed a hand on my arm and said I’d be in the next issue of Outside. Before closing the camper’s door, everyone focused their attention on me and cheered and waved.
“Hey Tom, good morning, young man. BJ tells me you guys got out there with no trouble last night. I was a little sorry I sent you out in that. I didn’t know it was so bad. Hey, is it true that you’d never driven a camper before last night!?”
The aging P-51 pilot just shook his head and chuckled as he walked away.
I’m sure everyone learned a few things that night. I know I did. We are not alone. We work together. Above all else, we should remember that tonight was simply another experience and should be valued as such, representing a life lived.
