The Adventure of the Winter Cave

                Today’s installment comes from the dead of winter, sometime in January, when snow has blanketed the world in a sheet of white. We find our young hero toiling busily in the backyard of his home.

                Me, I love the winter. The crisp air, the infinitely moldable snow, the way ambient light carries for eternity in the middle of a snowstorm, every bit of winter is magic. Fortunately for me, I live in Utah, and there is a limitless supply of winter adventure material to be found in this great State.

                Which is exactly how I found myself toiling behind a snow shovel, pushing heavy, white masses of the stuff into the center of my yard. I was a man with a plan, and I was not to be delayed.

                The snow had begun to fall as we drove back from Wendover. I had spent the day with Dad and Seth on the Bonneville Salt Flats, filming someone’s interpretation of art. It involved explosives, fireballs, and propane flamethrowers, so I was more than pleased with how the day had turned out. As we left the salt-pan, myself, the 12 year-old racecar driver, piloted our Chevy Suburban over the vast expanse. Flurries of snow began to fall from the sky. As we came to the end of the wilderness, Dad, I assume reluctant to end my budding driving career, insisted that he drive the rest of the way home. I begrudgingly yielded the driver’s seat, and found myself, again, in the co-pilot’s seat. Dad took the wheel, pulled our car onto the highway, and away we flew – homeward bound.

                The snow was still falling as we pulled into our driveway. A purple glow radiated from the streetlights as snow crystals refracted the electric light. I rushed to the garage, grabbed my shovel, and set to work.

                Thus, we find our young adventurer where we left him, shoveling snow into a monumental heap.

                I worked in a circular pattern, pushing the atmospheric bestowal to the center of our quarter-acre plot. Once I had accumulated a sufficient mountain of snow, I swapped out the snow shovel for its agrarian cousin: the garden spade.

                Digging with tenacity unbridled, I began to tunnel into my man-made molehill, shoving the heavy dross behind me. I burrowed for hours, and by the time the snow had ceased to fall, I had a tunnel long enough to conceal my whole frame.

                They say necessity is the mother of invention, and the spade I had employed to get me thus far had outlasted its tenure. In a fury of creative energy, I sprinted to the shop, aforementioned as the house of all Dad’s tools, found a length of aluminum conduit, and set, again, to work. Procuring a hacksaw, I cut off a three-foot length of the pipe, and employed a hammer to flatten two and a half feet of the tube. Bending my new tool into the shape of a saber, I exited the workshop satisfied that I had created just the tool for the job.

                I proceeded to use my aptly-named SnowSword to slice layers of snow from the walls and ceiling of my tunnel, creating an expansive cavern. Sweat beaded down my face as clouds of warm breath accumulated around my head. Claustrophobics had no place accompanying me on this adventure, but the brave adventurer pressed on. Images of Antarctic survival adventures flew through my head as clumps of snow, freed from their heaped bondage, fell on my hands, head, and neck, providing a refreshing coolness that stood in stark contrast to my perspiring body.

                This arctic explorer had carved a shallow cave out of the ice heap when a muffled, but familiar, voice filtered through the fast-thinning walls of snow.

                “Joseph, it’s getting late. It’s time to come in!”

                “But Mom! I’m not done yet!”

                “The snow will still be here tomorrow, Joseph. Come in, it’s late.”

                It was a circular but an effective argument, and I obeyed, extricating myself from my fortress of solitude.

                “Okay, I’ll be in in five minutes.”

                In the last stroke of the evening’s genius, I ran inside, filled a spray bottle with cold water, and returned to my arctic abode. I proceeded to spray a mist of water molecules into the cold night, hoping to add a layer of icy protection to my creation. Tomorrow, the sun would prove a mighty adversary, and I had best prepare for that inevitability now.

                Fortress sufficiently secured, I returned to the warmth of my home. Shaking off my snow gear, I anticipated the dawn and the coming completion of the best igloo the world had ever known.