Life in winter can be that simple
The alarm would ring early between four and five and because I worked in the woods during the employed season, slipping my feet onto a cold, dark floor didn’t bother so much.
It was deep winter now, and unemployment checks were the norm.
No slick of pink, like eye liner, painted the horizon. It was black outside as the inside of a truck tire and the thermometer said it’s warmer under the covers.
I was up, though, in wool socks, long underwear, oversize trousers and a sweatshirt waiting for the telephone to ring.
The rancher usually dialed me on the dot at oh-dark-thirty, and I wanted to be in the kitchen with the coffee pot when the call came in.
He’d say something like, “I may have a few on the ground ... that’s out there, and some he’p sure would be ’preciated ... if you ain’t too busy.”
Let me check my calendar, was not a reply.
He meant there were likely calves born to the range cows in the subzero cold. Often, the newborns would freeze to the ground, so I would drive out the many miles to his ranch and we would walk around in the cold and dark calling the cows, which during calving season could be owly. When a calf was found it would be pried gently from the earth while another hand kept momma at bay. The bleary-eyed calf was loaded into the backseat of the pickup, then trucked slowly over the lumpy snow field and through the gates to the house with the mother moo-cow walking behind. If the calf seemed sickly from being cold too long, it was often given a name and raised for a while in the kitchen foyer with assorted baby livestock and big bottles of colostrum. Visitors to the ranch house would scratch the critters behind the ears like a pup and the animals, their hooves slippery on the linoleum, seemed happy to have made it that far.
Sometimes the rancher would call for other reasons. He had an enterprise that didn’t stop in winter and months earlier he had let go most of his seasonal ranch hands.
I was happy to help.
I was out of work.
Days were cold and daylight short.
And I often found myself in my kitchen with a pot of coffee before the phone rang. When it didn’t ring, ice fishing seemed a plausible proposition, but daylight was still a couple hours away.
That of course is what cafes are for.
Cafes allow early risers to sit at the counter and call the waitress by her given name, and every time the bell above the door rings there’s a good chance that the latest patron, who comes in stomping snow off boots, is someone to share a weather story. Or, who has insight into ice fishing.
Life in winter can be that simple.
Ice augers are kept sharp in January in regions like that. Just in case. The 5-gallon bucket has a couple poles, a slush skimmer and jars of Pautzke’s. The grubs wriggle in sawdust in a tin in the glove box.
There’s a grain shovel in the back of the truck because it takes bigger bites out of snow berms.
Stocking caps often are tassle-less and tell of sports teams.
And when the waitress warms up the coffee in your porcelain cup and asks, “So what’s on your plate for today?” The pause is mostly for affect.
“Prolly do some shoveling, maybe drop a line out Gamlin Lake.”
If there’s ice.
Life in winter can be that simple.
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Ralph Bartholdt writes about the Outdoors for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached at rbartholdt@cdapress.com