Tag: winter

Eastward

On By Daniel DavidsonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

We moved to Michigan in January of 2022. Tiffany was 8 months pregnant and took a plane with Katarina and Ivan just after welcoming the new year. My older sister flew out and helped her make the journey back.

I stayed for a couple weeks to wrap things up in California. My dad also flew out and helped me pack and finish the house renovations for selling it.

We left Sunday Jan 30th in the early afternoon.

Everything is packed

Dad and I planned to take a steady pace home and not rush it. Maybe even stop at some national parks along the way.

Well we also wanted to get a good start, so we drove to Williams Arizona and parked to rest a couple hours. Before dawn we stopped into a restaurant for breakfast and coffee.

The early morning news was warning of a weather front coming from the west that would cross the nation, bringing ice and snow.

Dad and I decided then that we would try to cover some more ground before slowing down, and maybe relax once we reached the plains.

We made our way across the Texas panhandle that evening, and then taking turns we drove all night long to see the Saint Louis Arch by mid morning. FM radio reports told us of the storm hitting places we had been just a few hours before.

The cloudy sky grew threatening as we crossed Ohio late that following afternoon. We had driven a great length already, but we weren’t sure we could finish the final leg of the journey before the storm landed.

The front edge of the storm caught us with spitting rain and sleet in Fayette Ohio, just on the Michigan line. It was properly a dark night now and the salty road was getting wet. Our trailer running lights started to wink out, so turned on the emergency flashers and pushed forward.

Less than an hour later, we arrived safely in Hudson Michigan. The end of the long march east. The Crosley’s had prepared the guest rooms in their lovely home for our arrival. In fact they had just wrapped up an evening Bible study with friends not long before we arrived, so there was still hot stew on the table.

The snow began to fall as we hurriedly unloaded a few things from the trailer and then parked the the rest in a pole barn.

It wasn’t long before we went to sleep and we woke to find the roads closed a beautiful winter scene.

My dad was stuck with us for a handful of days before he could return to Ohio, and what a sweet and precious time it was.

When I Needed Nails

On By Daniel DavidsonIn DIY, StoriesLeave a comment

I had a certain amount of free time at my Alma Mater, when I was nestled in that beautiful northern land of Moscow, Idaho.

The amount of time waxed and waned with the cycles of the semester. In the most crowded of seasons, I was with Chi Alpha, studies, Resident Assistant duties, College of Natural Resources Ambassador events, and volunteering with the capital Dr. Finch – that I planned out my entire day in 15 minute blocks – including the shower.

When the pendulum swung the other way, specifically late finals week, or during some of the holidays, I had an over-abundance of free time. One Thanksgiving break, I spent a couple 14 hours days in the computer lab going through Excel modules and teaching myself ANOVA, and on another occasion I watched all 4 Shrek movies in a single day.

Well one of these free days, I believe it was during a class cancellation due to a snow day (which in Idaho meant we got something like 40 inches of snow in a couple hours), I decided to practice my art of picking locks. I purchased a padlock or two and went about to make a set of rudimentery picks.

Snow day University Of Idaho 2011

I already had an anvil, and a forging hammer, so all I needed was some small pieces of decently strong steel. Tool steel, like that found in a screwdriver or a blade, would be too brittle to fashion into a pick on a cold anvil. The blends used in coated paper clips aren’t stiff enough at their size, so I settled on the desire to find some old non-galvanized nails, and if I worked them around on the anvil for a bit I could harden them up enough to make a functional pick.

It would have been easy to aquire those nails if I had been back at the farm, for dad kept a broad variety of styles and sizes in a coffee can in the garage. I didn’t know anyone nearby Moscow with a woodshop or an old nails box. So I went walking the streets, leatherman in my pocket, looking for a pile of deserted pallets, or scraps of wood. These piles proved elusive, and then the thought came to check the old telephone and electric poles.

Jackpot.

Within a couple blocks of 6th street, and a few minutes of pulling and prying with my trusty Leatherman, I had a range of old nails and more than enough for my project. Staples, useless to my purposes, outnumbered the nails a thousand to one, but there were still ample nails for me. As I removed them, I wondered what flyer, or missing pet poster, those nails must have originally held, and how many years before had someone, standing at that very spot, placed it – only to be forgotten shortly after?

When I needed nails, someone from the past, their reasoning now long forgotten, had placed them into an utility pole for me. Long after their original purpose of holding a flyer had ended, tens of thousands, if not millions, of people had passed them by, and yet none of them took the nails for their own.

When I needed nails, I found them right out in front of us all, available to everyone, yet left for me.