If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

In addition to having to worry about the proper clothing to wear during a wilderness winter, now I have been forewarned about the possibilities of a phenomenon called (when you are in the wilderness) "post holing." I read my friend Gail's blog yesterday and she provided the following definition which I quote by means of copy-and-paste. (FYI: Gail is a Texan who has been at Holden for 2 years, so I would have to assume that she knows what she is talking about...perhaps she learned it from experience! Who knows?)

OK. Enough. Here is the quote:

"For you southerners--"post holing" is when you are walking on top of the snow and suddenly your foot sinks into the snow up to your shin... or knee.... or thigh. It is sometimes a challenge to pull yourself out only to sink again with the next step. It happens when the snow starts to melt and softens up."

Well, isn't this special!!?? It is the "up to your thigh" part that scares me...as in perhaps you could not extricate yourself immediately and all the Under Armor in the world would not prevent you from freezing to death in a post hole! (With Under Armor, I am throwing around a term I learned just yesterday in the Gander Mountain outlet (has nothing to do with a mountain...it is a large sporting goods box-store at sea level along the infamous I-95 corridor (for want of a better term....like deathtrap) on the front of which store is a large sign featuring the outline of a mountain and the silhouette of a goose-in-flight...thus, Gander Mountain...completely out of artistic perspective, I might add, just to demonstrate I know something about something....but I digress...

To my knowledge, Holden Village has no cranes to lift a body out of a "post hole" but those mavericks can really do a number with a shovel...and it has always been an unfulfilled dream of mine to be dug out of a post hole by a maverick with a shovel!

Next thing I know, I am going to learn there is another term for the same activity for a person of my size. It would be called "cratering"!

I will close with a question my son-in-law asked me in Gander Mountain (we were taking a gander...ha-ha...at winter gloves, real winter gloves, gloves that, if they get wet, will WICK the moisture away from your skin!). He called from several aisles over "What is the per cent of Thinsulate in the lining of that last glove you looked at?" My son-in-law is a hunter. He knows about these things. And he loves me. He wants the per cent of Thinsulate in his mother-in-law's- gloves to be the right per cent of Thinsulate....you might think I am exaggerating here, but I am not.