OCTOBER 21, 2020 – With the onset of cold weather our blood adjusts (thickens) but gradually. This explains why 33F—yesterday’s local temp—feels so much colder in October than in March.
Add the fact that my day-long bud-capping operation (see yesterday’s post) involved lots of standing in place and you’ll understand why I bulked up with multiple layers—long-sleeve-T, sweatshirt, pullover, parka, and an old wind-breaker to provide a capacious front pouch for carrying bud-caps.
Just as I finished, heavy snow moved in. I lingered in the tree garden to admire the developing white wonderland. By the time I returned to the cabin, I was a veritable snowman.
I brushed the snow off the best I could before stepping into the cabin. Upon entering, I removed my boots, gloves, hat and glasses, and proceeded to pull off my nylon shell, which was soaked through to the parka. As I pulled, the shell drew the parka with it, and suddenly . . . I was stuck fast with shell and parka half off.
Despite desperate effort, I couldn’t progress one way or the other—removal or returning to the status quo ante.
There I was, alone inside the cabin surrounded by blizzard conditions and locked inside an improbable strait jacket! My unlikely situation rendered my phone inaccessible, but so what? Whom would I call? My wife, three hours away? Nine-one-one? And say what? “Hi, this is me. I can’t get my jackets—that would be two—off OR on! I’m stuck like a mammoth in a tar pit! HELP!”
With darkness descending outside, I seriously worried what the hell was going to become of me. Maybe John, our closest neighbor, could cut me out of my predicament, but that would require that he know about it. And how was I going to inform him? Driving was out of the question. That left stumbling along the shore or through the thick woods, but in either case, what were my odds? I couldn’t see a damned thing except the inside of the innermost of my outer garments. If I could find my way miraculously to John’s without tripping into the lake and drowning or getting forever lost in the woods, what if John wasn’t home? Even if he was home, why wouldn’t he think I was disarmed but dangerous and lock me out until the authorities could lock me up?
Fear can be a good thing. By adrenalin alone, I fought my way out of crisis. But of the two directions things could go—jackets off or back on, fate decided the latter. I thus faced a critical choice—scissors or risk another strait jacket situation.
I examined the problem—soaked shell sleeves stuck to wet parka sleeves—tugged the ends of the shell sleeves free of the parka sleeves and on the count of three, exhaled (to lessen the bulk of all my layers) and shouted, “HOUDINI!”
But the Great Houdini never laughed so hard after any of his escapes.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
