FICTION   |   By Gloria Jean  » Winter had arrived in its entire splendor. Stately old pines drooped with last night’s snowfall, the canyon countryside now a soft white vista. My ski trail had become rocky and worn; this new cover would smooth it out nicely. 

I had skied this canyon trail for years, mostly alone. Few people I knew enjoyed the solitude the trail offered. They preferred the well-traveled ski trails of cross-country clubs. My tastes ran to peace and quiet of the back country, and the views from ridges I had known since childhood. Throughout my twice-weekly jaunts here, I could count on my right hand the number of people I had met on the trails. 

These were not the groomed trails of ski clubs. I plowed through knee-deep snow myself each winter to create an elaborate network of paths. My choice of path depended on whether I wanted to ski the lake, or up on the high canyon ridges. It boiled down to energy level. The lake was easier by far. 

Today was a Christmas card day, the spectacular scenery unfolding as I tackled the ridge above the tree line. An old trappers’ cabin was barely visible from the ridge. No one had been there for a decade or more, the last owner now in a nursing home where our bluegrass band volunteered. 

I spoke to him often; Sam would relive old times out in the bush, as I described the places I skied. His cabin had been sold recently to a company out west, but no one seemed to be using it. His sign still hung over the door, ‘Sam’s Place’.

"My old sign still there?” he would ask, his face crinkling into a toothless smile. 

“Yep. You nailed it up real good, Sam. It’s still ‘Sam’s Place’. Why, your old bathtub still hangs on the back porch, and your skinning racks are still in the shed. I’ll take some pictures next time I go out.” With that, his eyes shone like a kid in front of a Christmas tree. I gave him a big hug as we packed up to go. 

“That’d be real nice of ya. I’ll pay ya. I never got no pictures of that there place, but I got them here in this old head of mine.”

“No, Sam. No money. I’ll bring them with me next time we play.” He was smiling as I left, rolling his wheelchair over to the TV. 

Hockey night in Canada—he never missed it. Told me he listened to it on radio out in the bush every Saturday night, from way back when there were only six teams in the NHL. He didn’t like the way the league had gone, but if he caught Montreal or Toronto playing on a Saturday night, he was pretty happy. We always got the play-by-play next time we saw him.

I should have gone down and taken pictures today, with the sky so blue and the new snow and all, but I had forgotten my camera. I continued on up the ridge, and skied the afternoon away, lost in thoughts of the upcoming Christmas season. 

The sun cast long shadows as I left the dense pine forest. Loading up the skis, I thought I saw a trail out on the lake, but with the sun disappearing behind the ridge, I thought it might be my eyes playing tricks on me. I had seen no other sign of people out here. 

 ****

After an exhausting week at work, it was great to be back out in the ‘sticks’ as old Sam would say. Another picture-perfect day, and a good thing. I had taken along my camera to get some shots of ‘Sam’s Place’. It would be a lake ski today, but I would have to break trail. 

After an hour of fighting my way through two feet of snow, I was tired. I stopped and grabbed a water bottle out of my back pack. Looking ahead, I saw several trails. Those cursed snowmachines had found my little spot! My little corner of Paradise. 

This place was so far off the beaten path, and there were so many groomed trails closer to town, that this hilly country was usually bypassed by the snowmobile enthusiasts. That suited me just fine. I did not miss the noisy things. Oh, I didn’t mind the odd trail ride on a snowmobile, but skiing was my passion. I hoped they hadn’t ruined my ridge trail. It was so perfectly packed. 

I slammed my water bottle into my backpack, miffed that the solitude would be broken now. These sanity-saving ski trips would not be as enjoyable.

At one point, the ‘skidoo’ trail (as locals called them) paralleled my homemade one, so I lifted my skis onto that path. Much easier going, and it seemed to head straight for the cabin. Good. At this point, I was thanking the noisemakers. Breaking trail was tiring at the best of times, and I realized I was no spring chicken any more. 

Right ahead lay the old cabin, smoke drifting lazily upwards toward the cloudless sky. Smoke? Wait a minute.  If they thought they could get away with breaking into the old place, they had another thought coming. I quickened my pace, my blood beginning to boil. 

First, they take over the peace and quiet of the back country with their noisy machines, and now they defile the old cabin, a cabin that belonged to someone else. They were trespassing! In broad daylight!

Almost at the cabin, I spotted a snowmachine, shiny and new-looking. Kids! Rich kids! No respect for anything. One of them was actually astride the machine, leaning on his elbows, mittened hands under his jaws as I approached. That wasn’t exactly what I expected from trespassers. He was helmeted, sun goggles on, his face well hidden with snowmobile garb. As I came closer, I realized this was a big guy. What was I thinking! This might be dangerous, if there were more of them in the cabin.

“What are you doing inside ‘Sam’s Place’” I hollered. “This is private property, you know.”

“I know that.” He was grinning at me. 

“Then unless you have a good explanation for being here, you’d better put out that fire and leave, or I will be letting the owners know.” I was now furious. This guy was getting to me. 

“I have a pretty good explanation.” He was toying with me, the insolent beggar. 

“Then spit it out, ‘cause I am on my way back to the car to let the authorities know.” I could feel my cheeks burning. He wasn’t going to get away with this. I turned to leave, and of course, my skis picked that precise moment to jam together. I flopped into the snow on my side. I wanted to cry, I was so humiliated. 

The next thing I knew, this stranger was helping me up. 

“Thank you, but I am still letting someone know about this. You are trespassing.”

“I own the place.” 

Men. I had made a complete and utter idiot of myself in front of this man, and he just sat there and said nothing. No wonder he was grinning. I threw down my ski poles in a fit of Swedish anger, and glared at him. Naturally, the effect of the glare was hidden behind my goggles, so I hoped the smoke was visible from my ears. 

“You could have said something!”

“I couldn’t. You had the floor.”

Touche. I did have the floor. It was time to eat crow, and I did not like the taste of it. I picked up my poles, and collected my words of apology. 

“ I am really s-sorry. It’s just that I know the man who owned the place, and he wanted me to take some pictures for him, and I was g-going to do that and put them in nice frames and bring them to him for Christmas, because he is an old friend and I th-thought it would----” A skidoo glove gently placed across my mouth finally halted my stammering and rambling. 

“It’s okay. Do you want to hear my side? Come on in. I have a pot of coffee on. Do you drink coffee?”

Is the sky blue? Swedes are weaned to coffee at a year old. 

“I drink coffee, and I would love to hear your story.” This was not going to be an ordinary afternoon of skiing. 

Sam’s Place had been transformed. I remember it as being a bare bones place for Sam to sleep after a hard day on his trap lines. Nothing fancy. Bed, table and one rickety chair, sink and a crude counter with a pop crate nailed on the wall where he stored a few dishes. His old radio sat on a trunk by his bed. A woodstove took up most of the space in the small kitchen.

The smell of coffee greeted me at the door. The old log walls had been polished to a sheen as never before, and a fire crackled in the wood stove. It was downright cozy. New cupboards lined the wall of the kitchenette, and an actual pull-out sofa replaced Sam’s old cot. I stepped onto one of many colorful mats, all with an Aztec print. A rustic pine dinette set took up the better part of the kitchenette. Sam would never know this cabin now. 

As I picked up my jaw from the floor, my trespassing stranger handed me a steaming mug of coffee. 

“I think introductions are in order.” He held out his hand. “My name is Sam. I am old Sam’s nephew. He doesn’t know I’m in town, but he will tonight.”

“Hi. I am Glenda. I am old Sam’s friend. I am also seeing him tonight. So how come he didn’t tell me he had a nephew? And that you had bought the place?”

“It’s a really long story, but old Sam had a sister who was adopted out when Sam and her were really young. It has taken all her life to find out where she was born. All she was ever told was that her parents were killed, and that she had an older brother, Sam. 

“Well, she only started looking in earnest in the past few years. My mother isn’t well any more, and wanted me to continue the hunt.The internet is a wonderful thing when you’re looking for someone. 

“Like I said, it’s a long story, but when my company bought this place a couple of years back, it was because there was talk of copper being found around here, and they wanted the property. We are a mining development company, and this is not uncommon. As it turns out, the copper find is not a good one, and would cost too much to develop, so the property became virtually worthless overnight. I had been out in the summer, and kind of liked the remoteness of the place, and by fall, I was the new owner. Like what I did to it?”

Once again, I felt my jaw hanging. 

“It is homey. I love it. Sam would be really surprised. By the way, when did you realize that the former owner was a relative?”

“I’m getting to that. I told you it was a long story.” His smoky grey eyes held mine as he spoke. That grin never left his face. 

“When the place was put up for grabs within the company, I started checking out the background. It was uncanny, the guy’s first name was the same as mine, and his last name matched the one my mom had found in her family history search.

“The area was right, so I checked into it a little more, and sure enough, old Sam is my uncle. My mother has just found out. Actually, I just got the deed last month, so come summer, she is traveling out to see him. That’s why I am here this weekend, to go meet Sam.”

Well. For once in my life, I was speechless. In one day, I had tried to kick an owner off his own property, I had fallen down in front of him, (me, an accomplished cross-country skier), I had met the nephew of an old friend, and I was playing tonight at the nursing home where this man would be giving my friend some pretty good news. Did life get any better?

And now the burning question. 

“So, Sam. Do you have a family yourself?” Oh, I was feeling brazen. Must have been the coffee.

He made me sweat before he answered. 

“Yes, I do as a matter of fact.” Well, that ended any ulterior motives I might have had. It figured. This guy was a doll, ruggedly handsome, built for speed, tanned—oh what a package. And me with a perfect ribbon to tie up the package.

“I have my sweet  mother, my father passed away a few years back, two sisters, and now I have Uncle Sam. That’s it. My family.” His teasing grin was captivating.

“How about you, Glenda. You have a family of your own?”

We whiled away another hour as I told him of my mixed up family, but the bottom line was, no one was sharing the morning paper with me, and he seemed interested in that fact. 

We spent the rest of the day getting some perfect shots of ‘Sam’s Place’ for old Sam, and had an even better time that same night as Sam, the nephew met Sam the uncle. Old Sam cried. So did everyone else in the room. 

As for Sam, the nephew at this moment? He is peeking over the morning paper, as I finish this story. The smell of coffee is breathtaking, mingling with the sizzle of bacon. Our skis are waiting outside against the wall of ‘Sam’s Place’. It will be a great day for a ski up on the ridge. 

• Gloria Jean is a nurse/bluegrass musician/writer from Northeastern Ontario. Her stories of growing up in rural Kipling have been featured in a weekly newspaper column, As I See It, for more than two decades. Gloria has three published books, the most recent Rural Roots released in September 2010. She is presently a freelance writer of short fiction and writes bluegrass and gospel songs. In her spare time she enjoys the outdoors with family, camping and fishing, skiing, and playing bluegrass. She will one day retire and write full time from her cabin by the river.