In case you missed it: Ice Follies: Part One
So– there I was, duck-squatting in the middle of the road. I could not go forward nor could I go backward. The slightest movement threatened to send one foot east and the other west, ski poles north and south.
And, whilst hunkered there in this most bizarre of postures, it occurred to me that–if the mail must go through– then the postman would be coming round the bend at any moment. He would crest the blind rise the other side of the mailbox, hit the brakes, and forward momentum send him right over me, helplessly floating in the road. I broke out in a very cold sweat.
Alas, the mailman didn’t come. He hasn’t come. Isn’t coming. The mail won’t go through today, apparently. Maybe not this week. Some people have enough sense to stay indoors on a day like this. The mailman did not witness this spectacle, and I was spared the embarrassment of explaining that no, I was not laying an egg in the middle of the road.
Eventually, inch by inch, I clucked my way across the road in an ungraceful squat-walk. And once back to the grass, hurrah, I got to the board before it was swept away. My manly deed was done!
But, for all my heroic risks, the plank was irretrievably locked in ice and I could not budge it, even using my ski poles as a pry bar.
To seal the ignominy of this Herculean effort, while leaning and tugging on the board, I lost what little traction I had gained and lunged forward towards the frozen creek. A brief flash of terror saw me bobbing along in the torrent, a bug in the storm drain of life.
More cold sweat. I scooted cautiously back up the bank on my cold, wet rear and sighed a steaming-vapor gasp of relief.
Finally, defeated, I quacked my way back across the road–no more gracefully than I had come–mission unaccomplished.
When at last I reached the welcome warmth of the dry house, I took off all my dripping wet gear and went upstairs to give Ann a report. She must be frantic!
Wrong. She had been sewing for at least an hour and had not missed me. Had I fallen in the road or into the creek, my rigid body would still be out there.
By morning, the plank will have surfed south down the raging creek. Hopefully, it will lodge in a tangle of alders along the bank, and we’ll go fetch it back home when the weather clears and the road is neither luge or kayak run. That might take until sometime in April. Sigh.
I don’t know which is the worse to suffer: the cabin crazies or the winter things we get into when we go out into places where angels fear to tread. Or waddle.