This Old Snow Cave

We got another 5 or so inches of snow today. It reminds me of when I was a kid and we got 53 feet of snow every day and school was always canceled. Moms used to always say, “Don’t get too excited about these snow days. You’ll have to make them up in the summer when it’s nice out!” This logic never resonated with me. Given the choice between getting off of school one day earlier in the distant future and charging into the great white expanse of snow like a goddam wooly mammouth, the answer was obvious.

My favorite activity during these snow days was to get to work on that season’s snow cave which would serve as the staging ground for countless other snow activities. The key to a good snow cave was a well hidden hillside that was drifted over to minimize construction time.

The last snow cave that I ever built was one for the books. It had enough space for me to move around, stockpile snowballs, vertical air vent, and a movable snow boulder as a door. I was set.

One fateful afternoon, I was planning an epic snowball attack on the neighbor’s garage when things went downhill fast. Teika, our Alaskan malumute, was bounding about in typical Alaskan fashion when she bounded down the hill my cave was strategically hidden.

I, blissfully unaware of the ensuing chaos, was constructing my aresenal of snowballs when a full grown, overweight dog fell through the ceiling of my snow cave. From the look on her face, she was just as surprised as I was that she suddenly found herself inside my cave. Unfortunately, with her came an avalanche if snow that filled my cave in an instant.

I’m as claustrophobic as the next guy, as long as the next guy flips his fuckin lid when his snow cave collapses around him like I did. Teika and I thrashed with all of our might to power through the casket of snow we found ourselves in. Her front paws were going crazy, so I positioned her on front like a lawn tiller while she burrowed our way through the snow. We eventually tumbled out of the hillside with our lives that day. Teika would eventually lose hers to obesity years later, but I didn’t forget the lesson I learned that day. Don’t go where you aren’t sure of unless you’re square with your god because there’s no telling when your card is up.