Snowed in and feeling fine

We were snowbound, and the middle of nowhere was an hour away. I was just fine with it.

Barb and I met our friend Mike last week at our cabin on Fort Peck Lake for a few days of ice fishing. Actually Mike did the fishing while Barb and I stayed warm and cozy in the cabin.

Mike is of good Minnesota stock so the -30 wind chill and driving snow didn’t bother him in the least. Shortly after first light he’d fire up his 1970’s-era snowmobile and head out onto the ice, quickly vanishing into a swirling world of white.

He also cut a few holes within sight of the cabin so I could watch them from inside with binoculars. That’s my kind of ice fishing.

We were very isolated. The cabin sits roughly 50 miles southeast of Glasgow, a town recently identified as the “middle of nowhere,” in a study by Oxford University. Located further from a metro area than any other town of more than 1,000 residents in the lower 48, Glasgow is a four and half hour-drive from Billings.

When we arrived at the cabin Thursday there was a foot of snow on the ground, but the wind hadn’t yet started to blow. By Saturday, however, it was howling.

I wasn’t concerned. We had plenty of food and drink, including fresh fish. The cabin was warm. We had jigsaw puzzles and a cribbage board.

But the snow and wind continued through much of the day Sunday, piling up deep drifts. The six miles of gravel road between the cabin and the highway disappeared under an untracked, ever-shifting blanket of white.

It didn’t look like we were getting out Monday as planned and that was just fine. We had yet to run out of anything.

I tried walking down the road to see how bad it was, but after a couple hundred yards it became too much of a trudge and I turned back to the cabin.

While outside shoveling off the front deck Monday morning, I spotted a tractor in the distance coming down the road. A bit disappointed that we were getting rescued so quickly, I told Barb to start packing.

A short time later the road was passable, cleared by a kindly rancher who lives nearby. We quickly loaded the rigs and drove out before the wind picked up and closed the road again.

All too soon we’d be back to the middle of nowhere, and then in another hour we’d be home.

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected].