Life is not all about success. Life needs failure in order for an individual to grow into someone they never thought they could be. Just look at the Wright brothers. They certainly didn't succeed the first go around, but they learned and grew from their mistakes, and look how things turned out for them. Sometimes it seems that people don't accept responsibility for their mistakes but rather try to cast that energy away and place the blame elsewhere - which is obviously not good practice. I don't deny that the consequences of mistakes can be hard to accept and often quite discouraging, but you'll become a better person if you can find the silver lining and morph misfortune into something you can positively work with.
The Start of A New Season
Last season, we would pack up supplies and leave Fridays after work to arrive at camp in the dark around midnight. This first visit, though, because of the unknown variables, the plan is to sleep at home for a few hours Friday night after we get everything ready to go, and then leave around 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning with the intent of arriving at the trail head close to day break to give us plenty of time to deal with whatever comes our way.
Of course, no adventure of ours would be complete without the company of our #adventurecat, Willow, and rottweiler, Tyson. We could tell they knew we were headed up to camp. Not only do we repeat certain keywords that they are beginning to recognize, but I'm sure they smelled the scent of camp on all the supplies we took in from the garage. "The human nose has about 5 million olfactory receptors, microscopic proteins that allow us to detect odors. With 45 million to 80 million receptors, cats have a far better sense of smell—but they can’t measure up to the average dog, whose snout holds between 149 million and 300 million receptors. The canine sense of smell may be a thousand times better than ours, and so discerning that dogs can not only track a missing person but distinguish whether he recently had a meal or smoked a cigarette. [site]" Our two travel companions were very well-behaved the entire trip. It still blows my mind how well Willow travels in a vehicle. Brave girl. 💓
Of course, no adventure of ours would be complete without the company of our #adventurecat, Willow, and rottweiler, Tyson. We could tell they knew we were headed up to camp. Not only do we repeat certain keywords that they are beginning to recognize, but I'm sure they smelled the scent of camp on all the supplies we took in from the garage. "The human nose has about 5 million olfactory receptors, microscopic proteins that allow us to detect odors. With 45 million to 80 million receptors, cats have a far better sense of smell—but they can’t measure up to the average dog, whose snout holds between 149 million and 300 million receptors. The canine sense of smell may be a thousand times better than ours, and so discerning that dogs can not only track a missing person but distinguish whether he recently had a meal or smoked a cigarette. [site]" Our two travel companions were very well-behaved the entire trip. It still blows my mind how well Willow travels in a vehicle. Brave girl. 💓
The first leg of the adventure went according to plan and we arrived at the trail head around 7:30 a.m. with glorious good timing (unlike when we leave Friday evenings and must deal with the wretched evening commute traffic). I also didn't feel as rushed packing supplies as I normally do, so maybe we'll follow suit in the future. It's nice being able to wake up at camp Saturday morning, but it's also a tough, tired 6 hour/300 mile journey after a long day at work.
As we drove north, we did not see a lot of accumulated snow even as we drove deeper into central Maine. We were getting our hopes up that the trip would be smooth sailing! (hardy har har..) Someone I had talked to in a Maine Trail Camera group on Facebook mentioned they had a friend in a town just south of our camp who still had two feet of snow in the woods. We started to think that maybe some people just don't have a solid understanding of measurements and could not accurately gauge the depth of snow. We were in town two miles from camp and still there was not much snow to be accounted for. You could see large expanses of grass. Surely there must be some bare spots on the trail leading in to camp?
The first mile of our unmaintained town road, we've heard, can be quite treacherous in the Maine mud season. We've yet to experience Mud Season in all it's dirty glory, but even now, some of the ruts on our road are a foot to a foot and a half deep filled with muddy water. Something I'm keeping in mind - the town offers classes on a variety of subjects ranging from bird song identification, to forest management, to management of your unmaintained town road, etc. I will absolutely be taking advantage of these classes in the future.
We were thoroughly put in our place when we pulled up to the plowed snow mound one mile away from camp. I think I've mentioned before that there are three people who live on the unmaintained town road year round, and one of them plows the first mile of road. However, with few options for dealing with large amounts of snow, he leaves the plowed mound in the middle of the trail. Past that area are no year-round residents and only a small handful of people who have seasonal camps. I'm sure he's put the mound in that spot it since the beginning. The mound was about 20'-30' long and a couple of feet deep. How is there so much snow on our trail when there was so little in town?!
It doesn't look too daunting, does it? Pictures do not do justice. We looked at what lie ahead of us and thought maybe we can just drive over it. Theoretically speaking, if it was a plowed mound of snow, one might figure it would be extremely compact snow. A technique of "snow wheeling" is baby steps - inch forward, inch backwards, inch forward a little more, backwards, and so on. First plan of action - put the snow chains on the tires.
Tire chains on. OK. Lets get this party started.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Aaaand just like that, the party ended.
Apparently the snow was not tightly packed. The plan began as expected, we inched forward and backward little bit by bit, but then the truck pretty much immediately sank in the snow up to the frame. We dug the tires out first but they were just lolling back and forth with no resistance because the frame was resting on the snow, so we had to dig out underneath the entire truck. On my back in the snow with a metal shovel, I chipped away at the icy snow beneath the truck when we heard it slowly creak down to rest it's weight on the tires.
OK. Lets give it another shot.
Repeat previous steps.
.
.
.
OK.. Stuck again..
Third times a charm, right? Right. A charm in the fact that we didn't get stuck further along down the trail, and we were able to escape unscathed.
We shoveled for four hours. Each time we managed to free the truck from the clutches of the snow, we tried to move forward and subsequently became stuck again. After the third attempt, we finally made it past the snow mound. Hooray! Clear sailing to camp!
Only, no. Not quite. Hold your horses.
To clarify something, four-wheel drive does not actually mean true four-wheel drive; still only two wheels spin at the same time (front or rear). In order to get true 4WD where all four wheels spin at the same time, your truck needs lockers. Lockers lock the front and rear differentials so all four tires spin at the same time. We've watched a video of a truck with and without lockers, and they make the world of difference. They're even better for the environment because, instead of spinning tires and ruining the trail, the truck just crawls slowly and easily. Too bad they're easily $1,000 each. Add it to the Wish List! We're restricted for now.
The center of the trail looked solid, though as we now know, looks can obviously be deceiving. Once we cleared the mound, R went ahead to check out the condition of the trail right up ahead of us. As soon as he stepped to the side of the trail off-center, he sank to his thigh. We thought forward along the trail to a certain area where there is a field on one side which we've known to cause snow drifts that have left other people stuck. If this part of the trail is impassible, the rest must still be also.. Heavy sigh. We need to be reasonable and listen to our brains instead of our hearts. Plus, after four hours of shoveling, this desk-job-body was in no condition to shovel any more more if we happened to get stuck again - which was highly likely. I'm not weak in strength, necessarily, and have a strong spirit, but I'm certainly not in shape either. 😅
We considered walking the last mile just to retrieve the game camera SD card and to make sure the cabin was still standing - heck, what's one mile? ONE MILE!! But as we trudged twenty feet or so down the snowy trail, we realized we'd be better off forgoing that plan. Maybe if we had snowshoes, but after expending the last remnants of energy on that last hoorah getting unstuck, trudging another two miles in the snow was just not in the cards. We had to save energy to drive home; a drive which will already be fueled by coffee and energy drinks.
Since Tyson and Willow had been behaving so well inside the truck most of this time, we decided to let them out to stretch their legs before the 300 mile ride back home. Poor Tyson was getting faces full of snow; he'd be walking along on top of the snow and then suddenly his feet would break through and he'd plunge chest deep. His collar under his chin was caked in snow. 😆
As we drove north, we did not see a lot of accumulated snow even as we drove deeper into central Maine. We were getting our hopes up that the trip would be smooth sailing! (hardy har har..) Someone I had talked to in a Maine Trail Camera group on Facebook mentioned they had a friend in a town just south of our camp who still had two feet of snow in the woods. We started to think that maybe some people just don't have a solid understanding of measurements and could not accurately gauge the depth of snow. We were in town two miles from camp and still there was not much snow to be accounted for. You could see large expanses of grass. Surely there must be some bare spots on the trail leading in to camp?
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| Photos taken a few miles away from camp to show snow accumulations, or lack there of... |
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| Willow loves riding in the truck while we're crawling through trails |
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| The beginning of camp's unmaintained town road; time for 4WD |
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| The beginning of the final mile |
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| Patient kitty while I put on the passenger side tire chains. |
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| Willow is supervising Dad to make sure he puts the driver's side snow chains on correctly |
.
.
.
.
.
.
Aaaand just like that, the party ended.
Apparently the snow was not tightly packed. The plan began as expected, we inched forward and backward little bit by bit, but then the truck pretty much immediately sank in the snow up to the frame. We dug the tires out first but they were just lolling back and forth with no resistance because the frame was resting on the snow, so we had to dig out underneath the entire truck. On my back in the snow with a metal shovel, I chipped away at the icy snow beneath the truck when we heard it slowly creak down to rest it's weight on the tires.
OK. Lets give it another shot.
Repeat previous steps.
.
.
.
OK.. Stuck again..
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| Every day we're shoveling... |
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| Willow taking a cat nap in the truck as we shovel |
We shoveled for four hours. Each time we managed to free the truck from the clutches of the snow, we tried to move forward and subsequently became stuck again. After the third attempt, we finally made it past the snow mound. Hooray! Clear sailing to camp!
Only, no. Not quite. Hold your horses.
To clarify something, four-wheel drive does not actually mean true four-wheel drive; still only two wheels spin at the same time (front or rear). In order to get true 4WD where all four wheels spin at the same time, your truck needs lockers. Lockers lock the front and rear differentials so all four tires spin at the same time. We've watched a video of a truck with and without lockers, and they make the world of difference. They're even better for the environment because, instead of spinning tires and ruining the trail, the truck just crawls slowly and easily. Too bad they're easily $1,000 each. Add it to the Wish List! We're restricted for now.
The center of the trail looked solid, though as we now know, looks can obviously be deceiving. Once we cleared the mound, R went ahead to check out the condition of the trail right up ahead of us. As soon as he stepped to the side of the trail off-center, he sank to his thigh. We thought forward along the trail to a certain area where there is a field on one side which we've known to cause snow drifts that have left other people stuck. If this part of the trail is impassible, the rest must still be also.. Heavy sigh. We need to be reasonable and listen to our brains instead of our hearts. Plus, after four hours of shoveling, this desk-job-body was in no condition to shovel any more more if we happened to get stuck again - which was highly likely. I'm not weak in strength, necessarily, and have a strong spirit, but I'm certainly not in shape either. 😅
We considered walking the last mile just to retrieve the game camera SD card and to make sure the cabin was still standing - heck, what's one mile? ONE MILE!! But as we trudged twenty feet or so down the snowy trail, we realized we'd be better off forgoing that plan. Maybe if we had snowshoes, but after expending the last remnants of energy on that last hoorah getting unstuck, trudging another two miles in the snow was just not in the cards. We had to save energy to drive home; a drive which will already be fueled by coffee and energy drinks.
Since Tyson and Willow had been behaving so well inside the truck most of this time, we decided to let them out to stretch their legs before the 300 mile ride back home. Poor Tyson was getting faces full of snow; he'd be walking along on top of the snow and then suddenly his feet would break through and he'd plunge chest deep. His collar under his chin was caked in snow. 😆
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| That's as far as we got... |
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| Willow the Grey Ninja |
Once we extracted the truck from the snow - with a little nail biting effort and spinning tires - we headed in to town to get a Subway grinder, coffee, and fuel for the long ride home.
It's quite funny. I mentioned before how we use key phrases with Willow and Tyson. Well, as we were all loading into the truck to head home, I told Willow that we weren't going to camp after all, and that we had to go home. As soon as I said this to her, she pitched a fit and growled at me, and then slunk behind the passenger truck seat on the back floor where her travel bed is to sulk. She stayed back there for about an hour until she climbed out and snuggled in my lap again.
Miraculously, through this whole ordeal, we're proud to say R & I never once raised our voices at each other or had a snippy tone amidst the stress of it all. Even afterwards, we did not have a feeling of regret that we didn't make it to camp. In fact, even though things didn't go according to plan, I still felt a weight lifted off my soul; I felt that grey storm cloud of depression looming over my mind begin to dissipate. Granted, we would have much preferred making it to camp, but you have to take life as it's handed to you. If one doth protest too much against life's unexpected and uncontrollable misfortunes, life will indeed be much harder. Like Kid Rock suggests, you have to roll on.
