Trip to the Cabin

I intended to stay out of trouble. I also intended to drink. For me the two were incompatible, but despite the evidence I refused to believe this. I was sure I could handle the booze, sure I could stay out of trouble. The wall of denial was already high.

My buddy Duane and I decided we were going to spend a weekend at the cabin. My father even let me use his snowmobile which was a nice surprise, a big surprise, and so off we went to Albert Lake with some food and a couple or three dozen beer. I was excited – after all, this was the kind of thing I had been dreaming of doing for a couple of years. This was what freedom was all about!

I had the Yamaha 340 Enticer and a caboose to tow behind it to carry our gear. The cabin we were heading to was the first camp to have been built on Albert Lake from what I had been told. It belonged to friends of the family and there were a group of families who used it regularly years before. Now we were to find the camp was no longer in the best of shape and I guess the trouble that ensued was partly because of that.

As a kid I had spent a fair amount of time here with my family back in the pre-separation days. I couldn’t wait to go back now. This place held a lot of memories for me, most good ones. There were some that I tried not to think of, such as all the other kids my age riding around on the lake while I stayed in the cabin with my younger sister and the adults as they drank and laughed and argued. My father had a habit of saying no just for the sake of saying no. When I asked to join the others riding snowmobiles on the lake he said no. When I asked ‘Why not’ he said “Because I said so, that’s why not.”

Mostly though I remembered good things, like the first time I fired a 12 gauge shot gun and it threw me on my ass. Ice fishing and steaks cooked on the wood stove. There was a sign written on the wall by someone, probably Don Perry who had built the cabin, that said something like “Please clean up your mess. The maid would like to retire.” I never forgot that message, written right on the wall.

Albert Lake was a quieter place when I was a kid than it is now. Being close to town it filled up with cottages instead of cabins once the trans Labrador Highway made it an easy drive in the summer, but when I was a kid there it was a lot less crowded and it really felt like a long trip in the winter, though I guess it would only be fifteen miles or less from home. Now it is nowhere – a few minutes in a car. But back then I could pull up to the gas bar in Wabush with a shotgun on my back and no one thought a thing about it. It was normal.

I didn’t expect to do any ice fishing or hunting this trip. What I did plan to do was get good and drunk!

I think we cooked supper after we unpacked our gear, I am not sure. I know I had a beer in my hand not long after we were in the door though.

A little later some other teens dropped in, friends of ours, most of them a little older than us. They were staying at a cabin at the other end of the lake. With more people around I began to drink faster. Just seems to happen that way. The more activity, the more people, the more my arm lifts the bottle to my mouth. It wasn’t long before my switch flipped and I began acting like a jerk (Instant idiot – just add alcohol) and tried to pick a fight with Duane over some imaginary slight or something. It was while I was cranking up my anger and stupidity that we realized the roof of the cabin had caught on fire. The old stove pipe wasn’t up to the task and wood roof was catching quickly.

We all went outside and quickly had the fire put out using snow, but now it seemed that our trip was going to be cut short, and I was too drunk to go home.

With the fire out we were all back inside the cabin and it was obvious how drunk I had gotten. I was still angry as hell at Duane and shooting my mouth off. Since we could not stay here with no heat, one of the other guys suggested that we come to their cabin with them. Sounded great to me, so I gathered up my stuff, and headed out the door, staggering a little and trying not to.

I wanted Duane to get in the caboose, not wanting him on the skidoo with me. After some arguing I gave in and climbed on the machine, Duane behind me, and we all started off towards the other end of the lake.

I was still angry and decided I was going to make the trip uncomfortable for my passenger. The lake was rough, full of large snow drifts, but as we pulled out into the lake I started picking up speed, pounding up over the drifts and waving at the folks on the other two machines as I passed them. Soon we were airborne each time I hit a drift, then we hit the next one as we landed. Then apparently I lost my mind. I held the throttle to the bar, and we smashed off of the drifts at full speed. I felt no fear whatsoever though I must have known that we were going to crash. We kept bouncing off of drifts until final we hit on huge one and were sent sailing.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. I know we could not have been in the air for more than a couple of seconds, but as I flew through the air, head first with my arms by my sides, I actually had time to think.

“I wonder what I am going to break. I could break my neck when I land.”

Then I just waited to hit the hard snow.

The pain was fierce and instant. I hit the ground, my face plowing into the snow, and something landed on my ankle. It was the Yamaha.

I lay on the snow trying to breathe. I didn’t know what else was hurt or broken for a while. I heard the other machines getting closer but couldn’t raise my head. The impact, slamming into the hard packed snow left me unable to move. When I could breathe again I lifted my head and could see Duane. He was motionless, about thirty feet away. Someone ran to me and I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

“Go see Duane. I think Duane is dead!” I said. The pain was raging up my leg and I knew that I had broken something, but the fear I felt as I look over at my friend, laying there on the ice, not moving, was much greater than the pain.

Relief swept over me as I saw him move and then sit up. I had nearly killed him. I could have killed us both.

The caboose I had wanted to put Duane in had disintegrated. Pieces of it were all over the lake. I was so happy that they had not let me put him in there. It would have been a much worse outcome.

I received a lot of help and when we were at the other cabin it was quickly determined that I had a broken ankle. I would stay here tonight, but in the morning would need to go to the hospital. That suited me just fine – all I needed was a drink or ten.

I don’t remember much of the rest of that night, but I am quite sure I was a total idiot for the remainder of it. Once I turn into a jerk I normally stay that way until I sober up. I do remember at one point wanted to look at my foot to see how bad it was swollen – I was so drunk by then that I was standing on the broken foot, looking at the good one, saying “That doesn’t look so bad!”