The next day we went back with my parents to get the car. We measured the path we had taken the day before and found that after three and a half hours we had hiked 9 miles. When we got back to the car my dad just started it right up. Leslie thought this was funny, much to my relief. (Upon further inspection we discovered that the starter was going out) But now with the car running and a little time to kill we had lunch and then spent another 45 minutes chopping up the tree in to smaller pieces and pulling it out of the way.

We dove about a hundred yards and came to another down tree. It was getting late so we turned around and went back. On the way we found a privy in the middle of the woods and a lake that was frozen over. It looked really thick so my dad tested it out.

Carefully he inched his way out on to the white ground. The top two inches were slush and as he walked his foot prints gave us a great idea. If he didn’t do it himself we would make a hole at the end of his tracks and then have him back out so it looked like someone fell in. We tossed him a shovel and he tried to break the ice. We soon discovered that the ice was too thick to break with the shovel. So again I fired up the chainsaw and cut right through. It was about a foot thick but we didn’t know how deep the water was underneath. So I lowered the shovel into the fridged water to find the bottom. I couldn’t find it and began to draw the shovel back out of the hole. It was then that I caught it on the ice and lost my grip. It dropped into the brown water below the white shelf where I stood.

Very quickly we began to rationalize who would be best suited to jump in and retrieve the lost shovel. First it was me, then mom, then dad. Leslie, seeing where the conversation was going piped up and said aloud the next logical step. And she would not be taking it.

So it was back to my dad. He was a sport and after rigging him with a makeshift waist and chest harness he lowered his skivvie covered body into the water. He grabbed the shovel with his feet and back up we pulled him. It was then a long drive home where my dad warmed up and we were thankful for adventures and daring fathers.