Driving in the Snow...an Adventure

We had about 6 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, and as I did a bit of slipping around on the roads, I was thinking about an experience I had in the late 70s.

My brother was in college and was in a musical group that was going to perform at a small church in East Pitcairn, New York, which is right at the edge of the Adirondack Park…very rural and isolated…the middle of nowhere.  My mother wanted to go to the concert, and for reasons I don’t remember now, I was the only person available to take her.

It was January or February, and we had had considerable snow that year.  I had been in the area during the summer a couple of years earlier when I had been the nurse for a Girl Scout Camp, so I was fairly confident I would recognize the turn-off to East Pitcairn.  However, having a mental picture of the location in the summer and in the winter are two decidedly different things.  The mountains of snow had covered some of the signs and landmarks I had in mind.

We drove back and forth on the main highway multiple times unable to find the road.  Finally, my mother exclaimed, “There it is!”  She pointed to a pole which had a typical street sign reading East Pitcairn.  This was not the big green road sign and arrow I had pictured.  But, it did say “East Pitcairn,” and the road was plowed, and there were houses visible at the beginning of the road, so off we went.

We were not very far along, when we came over the crest of a hill and the plowing stopped.  I tried to back up, but the hill was so slippery that I couldn’t manage it.  I noticed that although the road wasn’t plowed, there were visible tracks, so I told my mother, “Well, someone else has been through here so let’s give it a try.”

I had driven with my husband enough to know that you cannot slow down in deep snow.  You just have to blast through and attempt to control the fishtailing of the car.  My mother was gripping the sides of her seat and had stiffened her body out like a board.  I said to her, “You better be praying.”  She replied, “I am!  I am!”

I don’t know how far we traveled when I said, “We have come quite a way and haven’t seen a single house.  If there is nothing over the next hill, I will have to stop and walk back to one of the houses we saw at the beginning of the road.”

Thankfully, as we came over the next hill, we could see the church.  It was at the other side of a T-shaped intersection.  I blasted out of the next snowdrift onto ice and couldn’t stop the car.  I said, “There’s the church and we are going to drive right in!”  I shot through the intersection…fortunately nothing was coming….and skidded to a stop in the church parking lot.

A bit shaken, we entered the church and found the concert already in progress.  Our late arrival was obvious to the attendees. 

After the program, a local lady came up and inquired whether we had had difficulty finding it.  We said that we had.  She asked which way we had come.  When we explained our route, her jaw dropped.  “Oh, my dear,” she gasped, “that isn’t a road in the winter.  It’s a snow mobile trail.”