WINTER WONDERLAND

There was one thing about living on The Rez. It was a very small place with nothing exciting to do. The big event of summer vacation was when your neighbor cleaned his pool. That meant that all his neighbor’s kids, whether he knew them or not, had access to swim in it.

Fall was a little less exciting; Harrah Elementary School would have Powwow days and the Indians would dress in skins and bells and tins and perform for the town. Usually it drew a good crowd.

The leaves were the most exciting thing that happened in the fall, though. Harrah had so many maple trees, that you could literally bury your kid in their leaves. The kids didn’t mind, and the parents were glad not only to entertain the kids, but the thought of burying the wild children of Harrah, Washington, was an extreme thrill; no more running around with their hands clapping over there mouth, going “ab-wab-bab-wa! Ab-wab-bab-wa!” like the natives did in the old western movies; no more kids coming in and out, in and out, in and out, of the screen door; no more bullies hitting your child with a stick—children were always savages, but especially so when the first snows came.

I was one of the children who did not like nor partake in the usual snow-ball fights; nor did I, in all my childhood years, ever feel the desire to construct snow forts. I could barely build a snowman, let alone make a fortress of ice and powdered snow. I saw winter as a quiet thing; the soiled leaves disappeared sometimes overnight, and when we’d wake up, sometimes there would be three (or even four or five) feet of snow!

Have you ever walked to school in the snow? I mean, as a kid. You’re about four feet, three inches tall. The snow itself was four feet. You’d plow your way across the icy road (which, thank goodness, was all paved clear sometime during the dark, nighttime hours,) and the only thing that was visible on your body was the pom pom that graced the top of your woolen winter cap.

Bumbling, with your hat’s pom pom waving like a pirate flag raised above a white, frozen ocean, you’d stumble behind Mr. Zaglo’s garden with the grace of a one-footed booby bird, where you’d then slip between the frozen European-cut bushes and the Zaglo’s intimidating mesh fence and cross into No Man’s Land: The Jogging Field.

Only the stupid kids liked to jog, and this was a well-established fact. It was either the stupid or the really brave children that enjoyed running the course. You took one glance at that enormous track, and it came down to one of two things: you either had it in you to get from point A to point B of it, or you were a chicken.*

Picture it: It was massive track with an even more massive field around it and an intimidating turf of green inside of it. It was too long of walk for any normal, out-of-shape kid like me. Made for adults, some kids swore. And they always made you run it when it was either boiling hot out, or at times like this, when there was nothing but a sheet of white gracing the whole of it.

I felt bad every time I crossed that field and marked up the fresh snow. I’d try to go the same path as I did the day before; or else, follow in another kid’s footpath. But somehow, when the day was done, that virginal snow, that blanket of purity, was turning into slush, marked up by a billion, trillion shoes.

But first, you had to get across it. You would have to have special overalls that kept you from getting wet, and they were so bulky and awkward that, by the time you got them over your multiple layers of clothes (underwear and long-johns; two or three socks; a shirt, overall jeans; then a sweater; topped off by the scarf, hat, earmuffs, and mittens you were forced to wear as well,) it’s not like you could really bend the proper way, anyway.

But snow boots were always a fashion statement. You had to have good snow boots, your parents would say. Sturdy ones. Ones that don’t let in the moisture. You said, “But mom, I want the ones that glow in the dark,” or “the ones with the pink fur on the top!” It didn’t matter, really, because in the end, you always got the ugliest, sturdiest snow boots your parents could afford. Yet, they’d always spray them with water-repellent. This grown-up logic was lost onto us of the younger generations, but there was really very little we could say or do in the matter. Still, the day the water-repellent spray came out was like a day of epiphany—it meant that rain or snow was finally here, and that meant winter. The fumes of the spray were nothing compared to the natural high a kid would get after he’d put on his freshly waterproofed boots, ugly or not.

So there I was. Stiff as a board in my layers of warmth and wearing boots that I didn’t even like. It didn’t help that my anti-snow wetsuit was bright yellow; or that I had inherited the marshmallow-puff like jacket that Dad made me wear. It was a terrible jacket. It was the same pee-colored yellow as my snowsuit, and it had huge pockets of fluff all over it. I cringed as I stepped onto the field. The snow was up to my knees. It was hard to bend in these clothes, let alone trudge the depths of the snow. It was kind of like what walking through molasses would be like, I imagined.

Somehow, I managed to hobble through the first ten or twelve feet of that abominable field. Now it was becoming scary, what with the snow now up past my bellybutton. I could feel the cold entering my toes as I pushed the snow away from my body with my mittened hands. The cloth of the mittens was so wet I couldn’t feel my fingers. They felt like fire, they were so cold! I imagined myself as a big ball of flame as I trudged along the frighteningly deep snow; a blazing child who could melt the snow feet before she got to a patch of it; a child with so much warmth that the snow melted by just the glare of my glasses. These thoughts helped, I thought, even if they were just psychosomatic ideas of warmth.

Now the water-resistant spray on my ugly goulashes was starting to die. The moisture had entered through to the tips of my socks. My toenails began hurt, the tips of my toes were so cold and so wet. Forsaking my previous psychological warming processes, I began to spurt every childhood curse I knew; yellow-bellied words would escape my lips like the heat that escaped from my body. It didn’t help as much as I’d hope.

By now, the other kids had made it to the other side of the jogging track, leaving me smack-dab in the middle of it with such feelings of forlorn and contempt that I wanted to then give up on my efforts. I wanted to turn around now and follow my snow-free foot-and-body prints home and emerge through the screen door of my home, welcomed by the blastic heat of the furnace.

But I knew that the other kids from the far end of the field were watching me and that this was my moment to shine; this was a moment of truth where I could become either a hero for doing what I saw as impossible, or I would fail…miserably…and never live it down. I could hear my classmates call out my name. “Katie! Oh, Katie! Katie’s a baby! Baby-Katie! Can’t cross the snow field!” Oh, that did it. I just had to get this done with.

My brows knitted tighter than the scarf around my neck, I tracked, I trudged, and just when I could take it no more, I emerged, wetter than a new born kitten and spluttering snow that I had inhaled.

“Look at Katie!” they’d say. “She looks like a big snowball in those puffy clothes! A big, YELLOW snow ball!” So there it went. Such a paradigm shift I never knew. Inside my heart of hearts, though, the words of the bulling kiddos did not penetrate. I looked back at that snow-covered frozen hell and grinned. The pain of being teased for having a yellow snow suit and jacket were only as deep as the residual snow that lingered on my pee-colored, wet-suited leg.

Taking a deep puff of winter air, I barged past those children and made my way to class. I had done it, by golly, and I was going to have my moment of glory, even if that moment was celebrated by only me. I had crossed the No Man’s Land, and I had survived to tell the tale.

Yes, winter was hard for me. I loved it very much, but it didn’t care much for me. That didn’t mean I was going to let it get me down. I knew better than that. Did that make me a brave kid, like those other wild children who could pass through that frozen land of doom without even as much as a blink? I didn’t think so, but I knew it made me a better person for all that I could do, none the less.

You wonder why kids looked forward to this kind of thing. I really couldn’t tell you what they felt. That’s one field I haven’t crossed yet. I knew what I felt, though. I was proud. I felt accomplished. I suppose just getting across that massive death-trap was enough of a thrill, that nothing else mattered.

That’s the funny thing about kids on the Rez. They were savages. I was a kid on the Rez once…

thought on a snowy day

We don,t get much snow here, only ten days a year,

in the old leafless tree behind our house , against the white land and leaden sky, in the still air,

I hear birds singing, why I wounder ?, the ground is frozen and no food to be found, spring is far off and the sun bearly kisses the sky

then as I listen to there song, and in there songs the answer floods my mind ,

we sing to keep the spring alive in our harts .it warms our soul,s and reminds us of the warmth and the full belly,s to come

I thank the birds , and shuffle inside , thankful of my place in the world, and the small bottle gas fire that keeps the cold at bay

vini a shaman's view