Winter weather doesn’t give my spirits a (chair)lift

Merry, merry, happy, happy! No matter which holiday(s) you celebrate at this time of year (or none), this is the season when some people look wistfully at photos of snow-covered scenes, the nostalgic kind that accompany the “over the river and through the woods” kind of songs.

Not me.

I grew up in New York and spent most of my high school years in the mountain states. So I remember snow. Not fondly.

That’s one reason I live in Cambria, where I’ve seen a smattering of snow on the ground (briefly) a handful of times in 45 years. (And yes, it’s been cold lately, cold enough for frost on the pumpkins. But there’s a big difference between frost and having 2 feet of snow on the ground and a thermometer hovering in the minus zone.)

Sure, in Snowville, we kids didn’t shovel the driveway, dig out the car, or put snow tires on it. We didn’t have to thaw the locks before we could get in, or scrape the windshield.

We rode sleds on hills and trash-can lids down a steep driveway. We threw snowballs, made snowmen and snow angels and caught innumerable snowflakes on our tongues. Snow was fun. Then.

Then I grew up.

But my most vivid weather-related Northeast memory isn’t about huge snowdrifts and sub-zero blizzards. It’s about a mountain-related adventure in the middle of summer.

I was about 10, on a car vacation with my grandmother, mother, Aunt Kate (two years older than me) and cousin John (four years older than Kate).

Everybody but my grandmother had passionately planned to take a chairlift ride in Stowe, Vermont. However, on that bright, sunny morning, Kate twisted her ankle, hard.

Stowe didn’t have a hospital or clinic, but Kate was insistently adamant that she’d wait while the rest of us absolutely must, must, must go ahead and take the chairlift immediately. Otherwise, she’d have a meltdown, right there in the backseat of the car.

So Mom, John and I figured the only way we could calm her down was to do as she was demanding (my grandmother stayed with Kate).

As I recall, we were climbed into open-air, individual chairs, not enclosed gondolas. We were almost too distractedly worried to really enjoy gliding up above the mountainside, to soak in the views, the crystal-clear blue sky, the calm air.

With Kate waiting below, we disembarked quickly into the arrival area at the top, then dashed for the other side of the building so we could climb aboard again for the trip back down.

The guide said no.

He pointed outside. Within less than five minutes between arrival and expected departure, our beautiful day had shifted to pouring rain with a howling wind!

We said fervently that we really couldn’t wait. We had to get Kate to the emergency room, quickly.

We asked if there was another way down, Jeep or donkey or ???

There wasn’t.

The guide clearly was not pleased with us and others who were insisting on returning immediately. Grumbling worriedly, he handed each of us a heavy, blue wool poncho. We slipped them on and climbed aboard.

What a ride! The roaring wind blew us from side to side, back and forth, with the chairs extending out almost horizontally. We were drenched, cold and terrified.

Then the lightning started. Fortunately, it didn’t hit us, the chairs or the cables, but it came much too close for comfort.

I’ve never been so profoundly grateful to see the end of a much-anticipated vacation adventure.

The capper? The ponchos were neither waterproof nor colorfast.

When we peeled off the soggy wool garments, we found that each of us had been dyed an intense blue, from the neck down to our sneakers.

We could have auditioned to be Smurfs.

The dye may not have been colorfast on the poncho, but it sure was on us. My sneakers never recovered.

Kate? The emergency room docs x-rayed, diagnosed torn ligaments, applied a thigh-to-toe cast and gave her a fistful of pain meds that promptly made her really loopy.

During the remainder of the trip, Kate’s leg and (heavy) cast rode in my lap and John’s lap.

All that could never happen today, with all the modern safety rules … but then, too, Stowe has an urgent-care facility now.

Looking back, I realize we really were very lucky. It could have been worse.

It could have been snowing.

This story was originally published December 21, 2016 at 9:59 AM with the headline "Winter weather doesn’t give my spirits a (chair)lift."