Mt Bumpy

Dan here Sunday evening. Stormy day today, supposed to get real cold tomorrow and the next few days. Oh well it is winter, whatever.

When I was a youngster ~it was long before video games and the like ~ summer and winter us kids were encouraged to spend our time outside and come in for meals. In the winter a snow drift would develop behind the barn. Some years it would get 6-8 feet tall and would be 25’ or more long. I used to like to tunnel in it. Digging into it then branching out both ways to hollow out the snow drift. I would play in it by the hours. Fast forward many, many years and I was again allowed to play in a wind driven snow pile. Only in my later years I got to create the snow drift with my tractor and snowblower.

When we lived in Rangeley, I would spend many hours after each snow storm clearing the yard of Quilt Inn and the Quilt Shop of snow. I always got a kick about the comment the weather forecaster would make as a kind of an after thought at the end of his forecast ~ “possible snow showers in the mountains”. Some years I would remove 6-8” of snow every morning as a result of those showers. Removing all that snow resulted in a snow pile that extended a hundred feet or more beside the garage and 20 feet or more high. 

It was a little boy’s dream, even if the little boy had gotten older, he hadn’t grown up just yet. You see, the little boy in me (he is never far away) saw that snow mountain as an excellent place to play.

Luckily, I had grandkids so I wasn’t seen as totally insane as I began playing in the snow pile. I would start in front and begin digging into the pile. Unlike when I was a child I now had a tractor to remove the rubble and blow it back up the mountain. The mountain became known as Mt Bumpy. And then fun began. 

I would dig into the pile, which unlike a snow plowed mountain, built with pushed up snow which would contain voids and chunks of snow, Mt Bumpy was developed with blown layers of snow that continually got larger as the winter progressed. Layers of solid snow. Each storm now became easier to remove because I no longer was just removing snow from the yard, I was building Mt Bumpy. This was on my mind from the first storms and progressed through the winter, always wondering when the pile would become large enough to begin that years tunnels. 

The grand kids never showed much interest in digging the tunnels but they liked crawling around through them and playing on top. 

The tunnels would be large enough that I could easily crawl through them on my hands and knees. Remember, as a plumber working in Rangeley, most of the time I worked in camps that had crawl spaces, therefore I spent much of my time on my hands and knees or crawling on my belly. This was not much different. 

I found that I would need to enlarge the tunnels as the winter progressed and the snow pile would settle. 

The center of the “head” I created would be all hollowed out, so the grandkids could stand up inside it. 

I could “stand” on my knees and look out the eye holes. One year we could crawl in the mouth and proceed 25 feet or so down the side to one exit (the butt as the grandsons referred to it) or go the other way and only need to go 8-10’ and come out different way. Much like a chipmunk or other ground rodent would build their house with several exits. I made it to look like a jack-o-lantern one year and even lit it at night. 

It was fun, albeit a lot of work, I would be hard pressed to do it today. I could still do it, but only a little at a time. Or else that is the little boy in me that on the inside would love to try.

Enjoy your week.

February 2015