The cabin sits at the top of a long drive, well… less of a drive and more of a trail, a two-and-a-half-mile slog up to serenity, if you want to call a group of Rude Boys over the age of sixty serene.
Call it Rudeback 2022.
Call it Best Ever.
We decide to make the trip a day early, ahead of a winter storm and its promise of a foot of new snow. Early will ensure first tracks after pushing and pulling provisions and bodies up and into the cabin.
“Why do we need drugs and alcohol when we have this?” Fin asks while pointing to the great outdoors we sit amidst. A rhetorical question we choose to ignore when chemical advantage makes the rounds.
“Sure!” We all say to some special chocolate. Count us all in — to a magical day in the Vermont backwoods making turns as smooth as Jean Claude Killy’s at Grenoble.
“Two words,” Guido says, over and over again. “Snow globe.”
He’s right, to suggest we come a day early, and to coin this Friday something you only get a few times in a lifetime. Perfect weather, perfect snow, and perfect friends bonded by a game and a time when we generally existed without pain during athletic pursuit.
We’ve come here to celebrate life. Turn back time. Forestall ‘adulting’ as Fin says.
“I think we’re still ‘adulting’,” my answer to his new verb. Our group able to find youth at the turn of a ski and the climb of a ridge. And do it again and again, like we did the intervals that once propelled now faded glory.
“No we’re not,” Fin disputes. “We’re adult enough to have fun and be responsible.”
OK. Point taken. Somehow, we’ve been able to keep jobs, raise families, and back Leif’s Dodge RAM up this slope with only the rear video camera to guide us. Mature adults we are.
“The risk reward of going up in this thing isn’t worth it — to fail catastrophic,” a back seat warning as we contemplate our options. Drive up, or get out and push the sledge.
“Can’t be done,” operative words that spur Leif into action. After quick inspection of frozen tundra and wearing nothing by familiar grin, he sets off. Backwards. His ability to impress leading the charge for as long as we’ve known him. Our Norwegian hero and prankster again applies the gas to fuel our collective zest for life. Hiya Norga! the call during another thrilling ride with Leif at the wheel, this time up fast dark track and narrow way ending at Le Sal du Partage.
As it turns out, it can be done, though we don’t quite make it all the way to the cabin. One last hill just too steep, even on second try. Still, we revel in the spirit of the attempt.
“This is the life,” Leif says the next morning when we set-out for a ski on newly laid blanket. Trails to be explored. Hill to be shredded.
“Go play in the yard,” Guido says to those of us demonstrating too much energy — the half of the group not suffering from the night before. You could stay-up if properly induced, but then you’d risk missing first turns in fresh powder. No, this not the year to finish that bottle of tequila. This the year to count steps, and blessings. To be together making new memories to replace some of the memories now re-imagined. Like how many autographs we signed at Ulevi Stadium one Swedish summer day in 1983.
“Thousands,” I invent. “So many that I missed the first half of our finals.”
The weekend plays-out in epic fashion, with Fid and Jelly arriving Saturday morning to enjoy some of what we’ve crowed over for the last twenty-four hours. This place out of reach of family, all of our chance to commune with nature, to be present, and to take a moment to reflect on life itself while the rest of the world seemingly spins out of control.
“No news,” someone says early on. “We don’t want to know what’s going on out there.” A few days to just pretend it all doesn’t exist. To hug a tree, and bathe among forest tree.
We climb Harmony Hill. We ski down Gunners, and skin back up steep glade to the top of what might be the highest point in these woods. A view a Mount Washington barely visibly through the tall brush. The promise of virgin powder earned after an hour’s climb straight-up.
“That was a physical test,” Fid declares when finally reaching the ridge. “Hardest thing I’ve done in years.”
Maybe I should have zigzagged, the accepted way to make steep inclines less daunting. But the New England underbrush seemed impassable in spots. Still, I have a nagging sense of letting the group down, especially when the last two crest with anything but a smile.
“Once I took the skis off, I kept sinking up to my thighs,” they both lament. “My feet kept punching through the base. Ugh.”
Three days in a cabin somewhere off the grid with little more than what we carry in. Three days with old friends who pick up right where we left off. Three days bathing in the quiet cold of Western Vermont. Quiet that temporarily dampens the constant ringing in my ears. Quiet whose blanket warms our souls. Quiet enough to finally hear our thoughts, clear and true, like church bell on a Sunday before Lent. The kind of quiet that comes when you really can’t access the internet, even if you wanted to. We forget just how much of a grip the constant connection has on our very being. This weekend, we’re here to talk, play games, prepare meals and generally keep off our screens. Here to connect with each other, not Facebook.
I leave this place lighter on my feet, ready to dance my way through life’s hardships. I leave energized the way three-day tournaments used to inspire. Yes, muscles tired, but heart and soul refueled. Wow, just wow! Nature’s healing properties in full bloom.
We’re lucky to have met. Lucky to have played. Lucky to come together like this. Best (friends) ever!
