The night before Christmas Eve -- last Friday -- some friends hosted a party at the Swampy Lakes ski hut. The hut is a small, three-sided log cabin with a dirt floor. Daylight sparkles through the logs, but with a tarp forming the fourth wall and a roaring fire in the stove (stove? it was a barrel on its side; this was a new experience for me; I haven't the vocabulary), we could duck inside for cozy warmth.
Our friends carried a card table and piles of food the few hundred yards from the parking lot to the hut; we ate fantastically. And drank. Stood around in the snow, laughing. Beers in hand, some of the dads built a luge run which banked around skinny lodgepole pines. Blake and a few other kids flew down the slope while the moms worried loudly. (That's too fast! They'll hit the trees! Watch his head! I'm not so sure about this!) My husband was feeling sick and stayed home, leaving me to play the agressive male role, but as the run got slicker and faster I finally pulled Blake out of it. He's so fearless he scares me.
Darkness fell around 4:30 and although someone hung a lantern, I grew uneasy. Beyond the window lurks the night.* Our little hut was an outpost of light and laughter 16 miles from home -- 16 dark and icy miles, with only trees between here and there -- and I began to worry about my husband and small daughter. So we waved goodbye to our friends, exactly as if we were leaving their house, and tramped through knee-deep snow to our car. Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to all!
Inspiring to see all those other parents wrangling their wee children in the snow and cold. It was one of my favorite experiences of the year.
*I remember reading a poem with that line in high school. Gather around, friends! For on the window lurks the night. Something like that. Anyone recognize it?
