The Trail Below

Always trying to stay as warm as possible, I borrowed Dad’s blue nylon coveralls and headed for the high country. Ol Darv and I were looking for whitetails and as fate would have it the snow was flying. We got to the camp about an hour before daylight, and I headed off to my stand. The wind was blowing hard up high. So I decided to sit on my backup stand, a small ledge. Once on the ledge, I was about three miles above the valley. About two hundred yards below the ledge, a small trail wrapped itself around the mountain. It wasn’t long before I felt the need to climb down to the trail and see how much activity the fresh snow would reveal. It was almost noon and I couldn’t stand it any longer. Trying to be as careful as possible I crawled around the side of the ledge and worked myself to the bottom of the ledge. Feeling proud of myself for getting down unscathed, I took my first and last step toward the trail. I am not sure if I lost my grip, slipped, or tripped. However, I do remember thinking to just sit down. A lesson learned a long time ago, it’s better to fall and get over it than to pull a muscle trying to catch yourself. As soon as I made contact with the snow, my feet flew up. And down the mountain I went. This being the first time I had worn nylon coveralls, I had not given any thought as to how slick they would be as they made contact with snow. Since I weigh in at about 250 pounds, it didn’t take long for me to reach warp speed. My first thought after saying AAAAAAAAAHHHH was put your feet down it will slow you down. All this did was create a plow effect. I was still picking up speed so I raised my feet. I felt every rock, bush, and boulder as I traveled toward the trail. This seemed like such a good idea just a short time ago. I used the butt of the deer rifle to help steer me around some of the bigger lumps in the snow that I figured could only be large rocks. I crossed the trail at a speed just short of breaking the sound barrier. I flew about ten feet in the air and landed on my backside. I could see a large tree approaching. So I lowered my feet, dug in, and impacted like a bug hitting a windshield. Thinking the worst was over, I rolled over just in time to have all the debris that I stirred up to come crashing down on top of me. Dazed, I stepped onto the trail and tried to shake the experience off hoping no one saw what happened. The zippers on both pant legs had come unzipped about half way up and the snow had packed in all the way up to my belt. I couldn’t get the snow out my pants without taking off the whole outfit. I walked back to the camp barely able to bend my knees for all the compacted snow. An hour later, Ol Darv came in and said that he saw the strangest thing. He said that he was coming around the mountain on the old trail and it looked like a bear had come off the hill the way the snow was wallowed out. He then said that out of the clear blue there were some boot tracks? He said that he didn’t know how that feller got where he was but he could have found a better way to travel.