Attribution: Photo by Nathan Karsgaard on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, notes the inevitability of the keeper using the first bitter cold winter day to regale Phyllis with the account of his spending the night in a Bad River deer yard when the temperature dropped to 30 below and he could not buckle his snowshoes on in the morning to navigate the three feet of snow to get back to his frozen car.
It was all a wonderful albeit questionable endeavor and began the previous afternoon with a DNR friend using a snowmobile to transport the keeper the two miles into the Bad River yarding area and then leaving him as he crawled into a “down” sleeping bag rated for subzero conditions. Closed up with just a breathing hole, the Eddie Bauer bag allowed the keeper to maintain a survivable temperature as he kept tabs on the night with a flashlight and a thermometer he had hung on a branch just outside his breathing hole.
There was the occasional soft shuffle of deer feeding on nearby trails, the brief yapping of coyotes in a pursuit concert, the explosive sound of trees shattering to the sinking temperature; and at first light a raven’s gurgle announcing the arrival of another day. It had been a magical night, akin to Dorothy’s trip to Oz, with the keeper seeking to know the ways of the deer’s frigid winter bedroom as the thermometer sunk to thirty below zero.
And then it was that the keeper, having foolishly left his chopper mittens outside the sleeping bag, could not make his cold fingers deal with the snowshoe bindings. There was no way out of his deep snow isolation without using snowshoes and the keeper knew a few moments of mild panic until he beat enough life into his cold hands to make them marginally functional.
The keeper still has his goose down sleeping bag stuffed somewhere in a closet. Maybe he will talk to Phylis about getting it out and sleeping out on the balcony deck tonight. She will likely tell him not to forget his chopper mittens, which of course are also stuffed in a closet somewhere. There are certain things that you simply must keep in the event of a really cold night. The keeper even still has his snowshoes!
