Saddle Sore: Managing the cold

The wonderful, unmistakable crunch, the squeak of cold snow underfoot.

The gray of colorless dawn, lying silently under the soft, faded, rose-tinged reach of sunlight hitting just the tops of distant peaks.

The half-remains of the waning full moon, denizen of the dark domain, staying high in the sky, refusing to disappear from sight, and insisting on its winter tease of Venus.

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And it’s 15 below zero Fahrenheit as we march along, my dog and me. 

Years ago, one of my favorite books (now lost to time) — something about how to survive in Greenland if you were an outside explorer and not an Inuit — said that once the temperature dropped below -80°F, the differences in temperature became indistinguishable. So badly did I wish to be there for one of those times.

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It was the 1970s sometime, when this writer was on the Aspen Mountain ski patrol, the temperature slipped below -30°F for a number of days. It was the only time I witnessed a grown man volunteer to vacuum the patrol room while the rest of us went on our morning details. It was a little testy, for sure, but for the most part, we welcomed the adventure of it all.

Sometime near the end of that siege, Larry “Bushy” McGuire and I, returning from a mission somewhere (It seems we’d hauled a man down with a dislocated shoulder), were riding the old #3, slow moving and unlike today’s Ajax Express, to the top, just over Dipsy Doodle. It was a sunny day, as most of those bitterly cold days are, and as we were quietly unzipping our parkas and pulling our wool hats up over the tops of our ears, Bushy remarked, “It sure feels warm out today.”

“Yes, it does. Let’s check the temp when we get to the top.” After the cold we had been experiencing, the -5°F reading on the gauge surprised us. It certainly didn’t seem that cold. We were becoming jaded to cold weather. Fortunate? Maybe. Until the next slice of artic air wafted our way.

Minnesota claims cold more than even Colorado, so it was a few years ago, I decided to hoof it up to northern Minnesota, around Ely, where cold seems to have a home, at least in the winter. And, they have wolves, the howl of which up close draws one in, especially in the middle of the night when they’re on a kill. My friend, landscape artist Mary Jo, knew the country we were exploring. A one-room cabin with upstairs sleeping quarters, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. We were miles from civilization. Skinny skis our transportation.  

How cold it was, impossible to say, although the hole we chopped in the pond ice to get water froze over again almost as soon as we got back to the cabin, about 50 yards away. The small sauna, unattached from the cabin, took about an hour to heat up, using the only available source: wood. When we regained civilization, we learned the temperature in Ely during the week we were at the cabin hovered around -10°F. Ah, I loved that place — wanted to buy it, but the owner liked it more, I reckon.

When I was maybe fifteen, my dad and I left the horse corral about 10 a.m., headed to what we called the Big Mesa, off to our southwest, where the main cattle herd was kept in the winter. The thermometer was reading somewhere colder than -30 F. We were looking for cows expected to calve that night or the next few nights; we wanted to bring them down to the main ranch where they would be sequestered out of the wind in nice, clean straw, and we could warm the calves up if need be. That area was known as the Maternity Ward. 

We’d peeled a few off and started them down the trail; my dad said let’s just watch the herd for a bit to spot anything unusual. We were sitting on our horses, about 75 yards apart, looking and, at least in my case, freezing to death. I kept watching my dad for the signal that we could leave, but it was not forthcoming.

“How long is he going to sit there?” I asked myself, getting a little irritated. “I’m not giving in. I’ll freeze him out if it comes to that.” 

Finally, unable to take any more, I turned my horse toward my dad, headed his way and with words unspoken, off we took, headed down to the house and warmth.

Over lunch in the kitchen, my dad asked, “How much longer did you plan to sit there watching those cows?”

“Damn, I was waiting for you to say we were done,” said yours truly.

We laughed, but I knew the test had been on me. 

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.    

Tony Vagneur writes here on Saturdays and welcomes your comments at ajv@sopris.net.