This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. Check out other bloggers at this week’s post.
Then
In my younger school days back in the mid-to-late 70s, I looked forward to winter, always hoping for snow, because I loved sledding. The Mid-Ohio Valley didn’t get a lot of snow, but what we got made things fun. There were a couple of small hills I could walk to, including Camp Tupper, and they were fun enough for a kid.
We had a cabin at Seneca Lake, a flood control lake in east-central Ohio for several years. One winter we drove up to check on things. It had snowed pretty good the week prior and had been cold enough for the lake to freeze over, so I trooped on down to check on our boat dock. While I was down there playing on the ice and checking out the weird tracks I saw in the snow, I heard what sounded like a motorcycle engine buzzing around, and then a snowmobile came into view. I’d seen plenty of snowmobile action in magazines and on TV, but had never seen one “in the wild,” so to speak, because Southern Ohio never seemed to get enough snow to be able to ride one.
The rider pulled up next to me and we chatted for a few minutes, me asking all sorts of questions and him patiently answering them. Then it was his turn to ask a question. “You want to go for a quick ride?”
Duh.
Our cabin was at the back end of a very large inlet, maybe a quarter mile from our dock to the mouth, and about 150 yards across. The north undeveloped arm of the inlet, I suppose technically a peninsula, had been turned into an island a year or so before after a party got way out of hand. The snowmobiler had been riding loops around the peninsula, so he took me on a couple of laps before heading out onto the main body of the lake for a bit.
I had a blast.
My old-age version of this favorite memory says we were probably only riding for fifteen or twenty minutes. At the time though, it felt like forever, and it was glorious. We stayed relatively close to shore, where the water was normally only six or eight feet deep, and about half that during the winter drawdown.
My mother was much more aghast at the idea that I’d been flying across the lake on a snowmobile than the idea that I’d been off with a total stranger. This was the 70s, after all. The world didn’t know stranger-danger just then, though it was coming sooner rather than later.
Looking back, that might well have been the beginning of my love affair with motorcycles and going fast.

Now
That was pretty much the extent of my winter sports activities. Honestly, it was pretty much the end of my interest in cold weather. As much as I enjoyed sledding in my younger years, I tried to avoid the cold as an adult.
My only winter semester at Miami of Ohio, it was incredibly cold, to the extent I remember ice crystals forming on my mustache as I walked uptown.
I spent two winters in West Germany, on a latitude about even with Chicago. It got brisk during the cold months. The Headquarters Platoon platoon sergeant often told us, “You’re not really cold. This isn’t cold. If you were in Korea, then you’d be cold.” He’d spent two tours on the DMZ, so he knew what he was talking about. And the Army being the Army, we didn’t shut down when it got cold. We still stood guard duty and did our tactical training and field exercises, even in the cold.
I went through a phase where I wanted to live in the mountains because I’ve always loved the beauty of the peaks and valleys. Snow is a given in areas like that, and I never really let that aspect affect my desire to move to the high places.
Then again, I never got around to moving to the high places. I currently live in a part of Oklahoma that gets paralyzed by a couple of inches of snow. The seven or eight inches they got last week just about shut the region down.
I still enjoy snow, even when I have to clear it. I just never got around to getting into winter sports and activities. It’s one of the things that I regret at this point in my life.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
6 Comments
I can’t imagine wanting to be out playing sports in winter. I’m much more of a “enjoy and marvel at it’s beauty from inside” kind of person. 🤣
I love the snowmobile story and honestly, my mom would have had a similar reaction! But I’m with you, I hate being cold, so I stay in as much as possible. I actually joked with my boss about how I almost called in this morning because I didn’t want to go out into the cold.
My post
I laughed at Oklahoma shutting down for a few inches of snow. In central A;abama we’ll close stuff if it even THREATENS to snow.
I can vouch for that. I spent a lifetime at Ft McClellan back in the 80s. We were on bivouac when we got about four inches of snow. They wouldn’t bring out a 2 1/2 ton truck with our breakfast, so the company commander used his 2WD Ford Ranger to bring us MREs. Then the brand-new privates got to drive the brand-new Humvees back to the main post because they wouldn’t bring trucks out to pick us up.
I love your story about the snowmobile. It brought back a memory from my childhood as well. I grew up on a small island off the coat of BC in Canada. It gets cold here in the winter, but not COLD cold. So there was only one year when it got cold enough for long enough that the lakes and ponds on the island froze properly and we were able to skate on them. This island was small enough not to have a rec centre or any form of ice rink, so we only got to skate occasionally if school took us off-island on a field trip, so this was an amazing opportunity for us. School took us out into the woods with our skates to play on the ice, and we all went out to one of the lakes on the weekend to take full advantage of the freeze. Similar to your memory of the time you spent on the snowmobile I imagine it was probably only a few days or a week at most, but it felt like a month! One of my favourite winter memories. Thanks for sharing and bringing that one back to me!