I got to go home to Oregon this past weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday. When I landed in Portland at almost midnight, it was a crisp 18 degrees outside. Nice. Since Portland and Eugene were forecasted to have freezing rain on Thursday, my dad and I drove down to Roseburg Wednesday night right after I stepped off the plane. We got in about 3:15A.M. local time, which was actually 5:15A.M. for me! So, you can imagine how tired I was! I didn’t even get to sleep in. We woke up at about 8:00 to get everything ready to head up to the snow. My family and our good friends, the Smiths, go up to the snow every year to get a Christmas Tree. We decided to go on Thursday instead of Friday because of the weather.
So we head up towards Diamond Lake—elevation 5200 ft—to find our perfect Noble Fir Christmas Trees. There was so much snow [and ice]. We had a party of 5 vehicles – a Jeep Liberty, a Ford F150, a Dodge Ram 2500, a Ford Expedition, a Nissan Xterra, and a little piece of junk pickup. So we were all driving pretty slowly as the roads had not yet been rocked. All of a sudden, the third car in line (Xterra) started fish tailing. The rest of us held back waiting for her to get it together. Alas, the car did a 180 and rolled down the hill, landing on its side. The rest of the cars stopped as carefully as we could so as to prevent another wreck. My best friend Morgan and I raced down to the car to see if everyone was all right. Inside was my best friend’s sister Nikki, her husband, and their two babies. To everyone’s shock, nobody was hurt! The oldest baby, who would turn 4 in three days, was crying not because of the wreck, but because she thought they couldn’t get a Christmas tree anymore. So we pulled everyone out of the car, and planned the next move. The guys decided they could tip the car over and assess the damage. Another surprise – the car had one dent above the front fender and the passenger mirror was broken off. We could not believe there wasn’t more damage!
However, my best friend’s little brother Danny couldn’t find his brand new iPhone. He had dropped it in the snow while tipping the car over, and it was, in fact, protected in a white cover. Perfect. The whole party of us [about 20 people] searched for the phone for at least an hour, but couldn’t find it. So we continued up the road in search of our Christmas trees. Everyone was so shaken up by the wreck, that we didn’t have much luck finding a tree for everyone. My family found two, and Morgan found one for her house. Of course we had to walk 50 yards in waist-deep snow to get to them, saw them with a saw that was about as sharp as a butter knife, and then pull them back out through the waist-deep snow. Trust me, it’s much harder than it sounds.
By the time we had cut down a few trees, sledded down the hill, and eaten hot dogs, it was getting late. We all piled back in our cars and headed down the mountain. Danny wanted to stop one more time to look for his phone. Everyone was walking around kicking the snow hoping the phone would turn up. Danny was so frustrated and decided to give up looking. He walked back to the car and kicked the snow in anger. Turns out he kicked in just the right spot; his iPhone was kicked loose! And it still worked perfectly.
Looking back, there are so many things that could have gone horribly wrong that day, but we got very lucky. There is so much to be thankful for in life, and that Thanksgiving in the snow opened my eyes a little wider to really seek out all of the blessings in my life.
Random Fact: A 747-400 has six million parts, half of which are fasteners.
Random Fact: A 747-400 has six million parts, half of which are fasteners.
