Winter Solstice: Peace, solitude and stillness

This photo was taken in Northern Michigan, on a trip with my Dad.

A few months before, I rode a snowmobile for the first time. By the end of that first day I had already decided to buy one of my own. I picked out the colors, the engine size, and the style during that ride, and I couldn’t wait to get home and start saving.

After a few more rides close to home, we took a longer one, further north into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was familiar country. We had been there many times, including that past summer. A few months of snow made it unrecognizable.

So there we were, riding along, just myself, my Dad, and a friend of ours. I was ahead of the two at that point, so after a short stretch I pulled off to wait for them to catch up. Oddly enough, I found myself waiting way longer than I should have, and I started to get worried. Suddenly I see our friend racing up to me, motioning for me to come back.

“Something happened with your Dad.”

As he pulled up next to me and began to turn back around, I could faintly hear him say, “you gotta come back, something happened with your Dad.” My heart sank. What could have happened?

My mind racing, I followed him in close pursuit back to my Dad’s position. As we got closer, I could see his snowmobile off into the trees with one of the front skids wrapped around a tree. My Dad was in the snow, on his back, struggling to breathe.

Thankfully a passerby immediately stopped and began to remove my Dad’s helmet and other protective gear. His own helmet had crushed his airway and was suffocating him. Without the assistance of the passerby, we may not have reached him in time.

An ambulance came, but the ride out to the nearest road was terrible. We were in the middle of the woods. The medics wrapped him up well and we were on our way. The local hospital took good care of him, and he was on his way back to the hotel later that day.

We left for home shortly after. It wasn’t our last trip. We spent the rest of that winter riding around locally and meeting up with other friends and family along the way.

The next summer we took the whole family back up to the crash site. It was surreal, but we were all happy to be standing there. We spent the rest of that trip thankful that nothing worse had happened.