When I was a lad, the scouts regularly hosted Klondike Derbies. It was mostly a sled and a bunch of boys you needed, along with some bloody miserable weather, and once the sleds were built they usually used them year on year, so easy peasy, right?
My parents assumed we would be sleeping in cabins, apparently, so I got to use my regular summer sleeping bag; turns out that wasn’t the case. I lie in the bag shivering so much my tent mate kept waking up, so I sat out by the fire and tried to keep warm. it was better than freezing to death. I had the same rig as many of my scoutmates, a scout shirt and jeans, cut down long underwear from Dad, a sweatshirt, and a parka. Army parkas were all the rage at the time so I could at least stay warm in that, but it was not my most pleasant evening spent scouting. Our scoutmaster kept checking on me to make sure I wasn’t on fire, and I think he pitied me because he offered to let me bunk in the scoutmaster’s heated camper, but I was stubborn then as I am now, though the warmth of the propane heater beckoned.
I sat, instead, by the fire, the light sleeping bag piled up under me and draped over my back as I tried not to set my nylon parka on fire. I must have dozed because I remember waking to the smell of bacon.
The scoutmaster was coolking bacon in a big iron pan, and when he saw me open my eyes he started shouting.
“Who was supposed to be on fire watch?” knew he wasn’t yelling at me because I had been there tending the fire all night. He went around rattling snow off all the tents and yelling until two kids emerged still half in their sleeping bags. “You guys fell down on the job. I suppose you were nice and comfy and decided to just stay in the sack rather than feeding the fire” A scout fire, for those of you who have never seen one, is eight or ten small logs maybe four to five inches in diameter, each with one end in the fire, like a big asterisk. As the fire dies you just kick the ends of the logs in till they burn some more. Takes little to tend, but you can’t do it from a sleeping bag in a tent. And you can start with logs five feet long if you like. The other kids grumpily rubbed their eyes in the brutal morning cold and he said “If it hadn’t been for Og here you’d have been eating raw eggs this morning. Now sound reveille and roll your asses out of the sacks and break camp” They all packed and were required to wait until I finished eating before they were allowed to cook their breakfasts. I knew it wasn’t going to make me popular but it helped redeem the cold night, and breakfast in the wild had never been so tasty.
Later the scoutmaster saw to it that I got to be a lead dog. I couldn’t run very fast, and at first I felt as if I was being punished, but soon I realized I was the warmest guy there- I was able to strip down to a toque and sweatshirt and made fun of the musher and the wounded scout who were freezing their asses off.
Midmorning we were turned loose and allowed free time- the rest of the group still a little miffed at me, I headed off alone denying them the chance to shun me. This was a state fish and game area, and it was post hunting season, so everything was locked down, including the shitters. And buy, did I have to- bad. But my TP roll was in the pack, and the pack was in the camper, several miles away.
This was a time when families like ours didn’t use paper towels, but I had some I had snagged from a service station, the kind that folded. I took my arms out of the sleeves of my parka, shrugged out of my coveralls, pulled them and my longhandled underwear and my drawers up between my knees so I wouldn’t shit on them, and squatted down next to a berm in a stubblefield. With the coat flapping around, I probably looked like an olive drab penguin trying to hatch the worlds most foul smelling egg.
I finished my business, wiped my backside with the scratchy brown service station paper towel. The stuff was so crude I swear it had slivers in it, but it got the job almost done. I really needed another swipe, but I was out of paper.
Of course I had a hankie, everyone carried one at that time, and scouts most of all. I used it to wipe my glasses, but I never would blow my nose in it. It just wasn’t done. You might need to hand it to a damsel in distress, mightn’t you? And what damsel wants to cry into a rag full of magic nose goblins?
Anyway, it was all I had left, so I used it. I had five of them, Christmas presents, my sister gave them to me with my initials crudely embroidered in the corner. I felt bad about it but I cut the corner with the embroidery off and put it in my shirt pocket, then finished my business.
I stumbled onto that piece of handkerchief saturday, easily forty years gone by, man and boy.
It made me think of how cold I was then, and how cold now. A couple of kids got very minor cases of frostbite and one kid set his sleeping bag on fire. I nearly ended up with frostbite on my fingers. I had sorels even then, so my toes stayed toasty warm, but the fingers hurt for a couple days afterwards.
Running the snowblower yesterday and last night and today, I felt that tiny twinge of pain and remembered pulling that sled all those years ago and the kids who got frostbite because they didn’t have or wouldn’t wear their gloves or mitts. And I remember how lucky I am, to have a warm home, a roof over my head, a snowblower, with my driveway! and a nice warm fireplace to sit around. Nothing makes you appreciate the humblest shelter and the simplest of central heating systems like a brutal cold winter night.
