Climbing for a Tree

In the Pacific Northwest people are a little different there than where I am from in the Midwest. For example: Come rain or shine, and most usually rain, they are outside, braving the elements, and somehow working their bodies. I saw a lot of runners, bikers, people walking their dogs, and just a whole lot of spandex in general on my trip. The defense is that if they waited for perfect days to do stuff outside those days would be few and far between. I get the argument, but that still didn’t increase my Midwest desires to go romp around in it. Here in the center of the country most of us don’t think twice about going outside in inclement weather; we just stay inside and find something else to do.
All that to be said, when it was raining one day and all of our friends wanted to climb up this mountain to get a Christmas tree, my brother and I almost skipped out and went to a restaurant for lunch. We like to refer to ourselves as more of the social kind of people rather than the physical. Don’t get me wrong, we do our share of working out and sports and what-have-you, but, well…it was raining, and I have already covered that.

Somehow or another, though, after almost a week of drinking coffee and eating Thanksgiving and drinking more coffee, I was a little antsy to get out of the house and to not eat or drink anything, EVEN if it WAS raining. “We haven’t really had an adventure,” I told my brother, and for those of you who don’t know, I love adventures.

So here now is one of my good stories. About two kids from the Midwest, doing something in the rain, and having a much better adventure than maybe anticipated.

We started out with seven cars at the base of the mountain and 15 people. And might I add before I go on that the weather looked this:

And this is what my brother thought of the weather:

Ok, not so much:

And this is what my good friend thought of it:

Moving on. Knowing that not all seven cars would make it (no way would they make it!) we condensed us all into two cars. I started to get really excited when nine of us got into this:

Case in point:

To the summit, or bust. We started off and things were going pretty well; after all we had a monster truck, chains on our tires and a fantastic driver, who, let’s just say….this was not his first rodeo. I put my entire trust in this guy. Literally, my life was in his hands. There was a drop-off to the right of us the whole time. I mean, what is climbing a mountain without a little drop-off, with nothing between you and death but a few tall trees? (Ok, maybe I am stretching the story. There were a lot of trees between me and my death).

I digress. So we are all piled into our SUV with a more than competent driver heading up the hill. The park rangers stopped us at one point and said, “Now, a lot of cars haven’t been able to make it past this point, and if you get out of the ruts you may have a hard time with it, and there really aren’t too many places to turn around, so you might not make it back. Ever.”

They didn’t actually say that last part, but for humor’s sake if I was a park ranger I would have.

 And let me just say that adventures are nothing unless you are with the right people. Out of the 9 in our car there was only one who I didn’t personally know to either be feisty or funny or both (what a good combination).  I have travelled a lot and not all of those times have I travelled well. If somebody can’t look at the Brightside and say “Hey, I know we might not make it out alive, but this will be a great story in the newspaper,” then they may not be the people you want to traipse up a mountain with in the pouring icy drizzle. I admit there were a few times when my brother and I shot a glance at each other of “I don’t know about this; should we say something?” as we are heeing and hawing back and forth, front and back. “I’ve got this, guys. Don’t worry,” our driver would say. These situations call for a large amount of trust, let me tell you.

At one point we came up on a vehicle that was having a bit of an issue:

There isn’t much that one can do in situations such as these to help other than direct them. “Ok, put it in low, sharp right, hard left, gun it!” The driver did get good and freed and off she went.

Yeah, that’s right. I said she. The driver was a woman. Never before have I been intimidated by another woman. Until now. Nice work.

In the meantime, though, her husband was helping direct her, so when she took off, there can be no stopping and he was left behind. Saddle up, partner. Now the Bronco carried 10 up the mountain.

I don’t know if I am conveying just how slow-going this mountain climbing was. There was a lot of driving a few feet, making ruts, backing up, driving a few feet, making ruts, backing up, gaining momentum, driving a few feet, backing up. I mean, it took us two hours to get up this thing.

One spot in particular was exceptionally tricky, and the jeep that was tailing us with our friends could not make it any more, despite that the driver was exceptionally masculine and tried his darndest to make it. I think he might have even shed a wee bit of a tear when he found out that the other SUV was driven by a woman. And she was making it.

Ha.

In our attempts to keep the group together, we thought, “Let’s just pile the six from their car into ours and PULL their jeep.”

Which is exactly what we did.

At one point, with the car full, we had to go over this huge rut, making our front end fly up into the air and our back end descend into the depths of the earth. There were loud screams and arms flying and the kids started to cry. And it was awesome. More like riding a bull than I fear I ever will in real life

We decided that with our population addition to the vehicle that Ford should come out with an ad saying, “The 1987 Ford Bronco now seats 15.”
Thank you, American made.

When we finally arrived to the summit I reminded myself that we actually had to get out of the car now, hike into the woods, and cut down Christmas trees. I will admit, though, the grocery store parking lot doesn’t come anywhere close to this Christmas tree lot:

Hiking with saws, finding random shot gun shells (even though the sign said, “No Shooting Beyond This Point”), playing sporadic games of snowball baseball, and the occasional tackle-someone-who-is-smaller-than-you-into-a-snowbank, we were successful at finding more trees than we needed.

“There she goes!”

I was a bit surprised when I found out that this is what trees from a mountain look like:

No, no, Costco, your trees aren’t real. And I know that now.

Saws are good for other things, too.

Once the dark started to settle in we decided that since we had caught our needed catches of the day, we should start our descent.

Piling the tress on top of the Bronco, and giving our friendly girl-driver assistance in turning around, we all toppled back into our respective SUVs and were ready to go. But then an offer came from our friendly girl driver where we would gain a package of string cheese in exchange for some help loading their Christmas tree.

“No, we will just do it! We don’t need the string cheese….ok, well we will take one for the baby. Um, yeah, maybe the kids want one. Oh, ok, we have someone who needs protein…no, this is fine really…I mean, we don’t want to take your stuff we will just help you!..But uh, yeah, ok, we’ll take the package of string cheese.”
We all had string cheese that day.

J

 Somehow or another the way down seemed a little more violent. I think it was that gravity was pulling this time and those ruts just didn’t want to keep up in place.

I sat there thinking, “Ok, this is where it ends. Dear God let us get off this mountain tonight.”

You know, it’s funny. I think being a Christian is a lot like climbing a mountain on roads that don’t get shoveled. I know, I know, you have all heard this before. But I am serious. Unless you have got some serious spiritual tire chains, a Bronco of perseverance, and Someone leading you who really knows what they are doing (i.e. Jesus---the one who made that mountain), I guarantee you’re not going to make it. And sitting in the middle of the trail, stuck in the ice, will never get you to any summit.