Trudging Along

Andy had alluded that it might be nice for me to come out for a visit while he and Andrew were out camping and since the temperatures were in the teens and I didn’t have anything terribly pressing to work on, yesterday I decided to make the trudge out to Rose Lake. The trek that would have taken about three hours one way using the land trail, took just over an hour across the flat, frozen lakes. While I was mildly worried that Andrew and Andy might have decided to camp on a different lake, I had seen their car in the parking lot and I followed what I was fairly certain were their footprints and sled marks. I found them camping right where they said they’d be after giving them a brief scare thinking I might be a game warden come to talk to them about their ice fishing tip-ups.

It hasn’t exactly been Andy and Andrew’s most hardcore camping trip. On Saturday, their ice auger broke and because it’s such a short trek in and out, they came back to the Shack to fetch the other auger. When I arrived at the campsite yesterday, the guys were in the process of packing up camp. After two days of ice fishing and only one bite, they’d decided to come home and go out on an ice fishing day trip on a different lake today.

As we finished packing camp, a light snow started to fall, frosting the world with fresh fluff. After the guys picked up their tip-ups, we faced the only challenge of the trek back The Stairway Portage, as its called, was constructed in the 1930s by a CCC crew and features approximately 80 steps down to Rose Lake, or if you’re coming back from Rose Lake, 80 steps up. With both Andy and Andrew were harnessed to a sled full of camping gear, there was some concern that the sled would pull them back down the steps on a bit of a joy ride. To prevent that from happening, I followed behind Andy and helped shove the sled upwards. Andrew however decided to head up sans assistance and all three people and both sleds, as well as the cooler of minnows made it to the top of the stairs uneventfully. With the steps behind us, the terrain leveled and we spent the next hour quietly trudging on through the snow, headed to home and a lasagna and blueberry pie dinner. The guys were pretty excited to sleep on level surfaces free of tree stumps.

As I followed behind Andy’s sled, I got to thinking: how many people get to spend their idle Sundays hiking across three lakes out to the Canadian border to spend some time with friends? We do lead a charmed life.

Today Andy and Andrew set off to ice fish and while I hemmed and hawed about tagging along, in the end I decided to stay home to get some work done. So far, I have called two contacts who are out of the office today and have left messages with two others. I have not actually made contact with anyone who can help me write the article. And this is exactly why I stayed home to attempt initial contact. In my intern days, I used to make the hasty assumption that articles could be written in an hour or so. Yeah, they can be, if you actually talk to everyone on your first try. I’ve learned that rarely happens, particularly if you’re trying to reach people in the medical community as I currently am.

I do have all of the information I need to write one of the two articles due this Friday, so I will get to work on that this afternoon. This past week has been a busy week of socializing: lovely, but means I need to spend the day putting forth some energy for all writing projects. If I’m not destined to make any money waitressing, I’ve really got to line up some more freelance work. Trudge, trudge.

We’re all dying slow deaths at the restaurant. (I guess if you want to be morbidly truthful, we die slow deaths every second, regardless of where we are.) We desperately need an influx of tourism and to achieve an influx of tourism, we need some snow. I’m by no means a member of snow’s fan club, but I can’t afford for business to be so slow. It’s funny really, the things you come to support when your livelihood’s dependant on it.