Eagles and ice hockey

It’s a beautiful sunshiny morning. I glance out the window to check the thermostat on my back porch. It’s a hearty minus-15 degrees. Today is bound to be a long one, I say to myself as I grab my goosedown jacket and heavy duty boots. Why the heck am I living here in what feels to me the tundra? I mumble to myself.

I trudge out into the foot and half of snow to get to my car. Of course, I hadn’t shoveled the steps, which now look like a toboggan ramp. The car starts okay and I run back inside while I let it warm up before heading up the river to Narrowsburg. I pause a moment while I think back to another 15-below day some years back.

It was a Friday morning and I had a closing the following Monday. My son was home from school that day and I promised him that we would do something special if he behaved while I picked up the key that was sitting in a lock box at the house.

“What are we doing special if I’m good?” he asked over and over as we drove.

I was thinking of a burger and fries at McDonald’s.

When I arrived at the house, I immediately saw that something was wrong. The sun was hitting the front windows and I could see ice crystals sparkling from inside the windows. I wanted to leave him the car, but it was too cold for him to stay behind.

As I turned the lock, I stood there in disbelief and assessed the situation.

My son, however, was in his 10-year-old glory. “Wow a house… with an indoor ice arena,” he screamed.

I told him to stay put while I ran down to the basement to turn off the water pump. The house had run out of oil sometime during the week and the heat was out. A water pipe in the upstairs bathroom had burst, sending huge amounts of water through the ceiling and down the walls to the living room. By the looks of it, it had been running and freezing for at least a week.

I grabbed my sliding son from the floor and broke up his imaginary hockey game and went back to the car where I called the owners. As I dialed, he begged to go back in, willingly trading McDonald’s for indoor hockey.

Builders worked through the weekend repairing the damage, which included cutting out all of the ice sculptures hanging from the ceiling like stalagmites. The buyers were good sports and put off their final walk-through until the repairs were done and the closing did happen later the following week.

In the years since, I make it a point to check my empty houses often. With this thought in mind, I head out of my toasty warm house ready to face the challenges of the day. With coffee finished and my car suitably warmed, I make my way to work.

Sometime during the night a fresh dusting of snow had fallen covering the sleepy hamlet of Barryville. Water running down the side of the mountain along my route takes on the blue tint of an artist’s brush and reminds me of the icy house and my son’s giggly face as he slid through that house.

An eagle careens past, dodging the ice-kissed, sunlit branches along the way. I stop my car to watch the sight, acting like a tourist experiencing life in the country for the first time. I listen as he calls to his mate, who is perched on a floating raft of ice, waiting in the silence of the morning.

I just can’t imagine living anyplace else, frigid temperatures and all.