Woodstock - God's hands in the skiers Mash Potatoes

In case some of you didn't here, we had quite a storm up in these parts. Last wed. I was writing about the beauty of this winter, right before we got in the thick of it. Woodstock was actually spared some of the snow, compared to our neighboring towns like Mount Tremper, Phoenicia, and Hunter. But hearing of the storm's coming, I prepared like a good german, went to butcher and stocked up on the essentials, meats, potatoes, and beer.. of course:) A lot of the phone and cable lines were out, and frankly I needed a little break from work, so I decided to hit the slopes - go to Hunter and ski in some mash potatoes for the day. Driving with my friend, we went through Saugarties, and there wasn't even any snow on the ground there. As we begin to enter Hunter proper, we began to realize what we were entering. A literal step back in time. 

Huge snow banks everywhere, at least 5 ft of snow on the roofs, of all the houses, state of emergency for that part of town. One woman won't ever forget, was standing outside of her house crying, because she didn't have any of the essentials, heat, water, phone, her car was snowed in. Crazy... We then thought, well 'lets pull into this gas station' and get some gas. You know survival mode takes over. And before you read anymore, you're probably thinking, why didn't they turn around. Its like you're driving, you hear of things, but its not near you so you're like ok.. then you arrive. Was a first for me gotta say. 

Anyway, we get there, and you know you can't turn around. So we proceed to the gas station. We make a right hand turn and ta da... we get stuck in this huge snow hole. We're driving a saab by the way. So I'm like ok, I'll get out and push. No luck. All of a sudden, these Polish guys come up and offer a hand. They had the big Ford pick up with rope, the whole 9 right.. So we start pushing back and forth to get our car out of this hole. Nothing. Then I look below and saw that there was a place on the frame of the car where we could loop something and try and pull it out. The Polish guys were like great, 'we have rope'... So we tied the rope and then started pulling the saab with their Ford pick up. I'm thinking the bumper is going to come off. What was so crazy, is that we had been in Hunter for about 10 minutes at this point when this all started to happen. Then all of a sudden, this other guy pulls up in an old rusty white pick up and says, 'He guys, I gotta a chain'... I was like Cool... 

So we hook on the chain and the Polish pick up pulls us out of the hole and we were able to pump some gas. I went out and quickly offered them a case of beer and a twenty spot. I mean you know that's the least we could do.  All four men quickly turned and refused the money. Frankly they were kind of turned off that I even asked. 

That's when you realized that God was around. You know what I mean? That moment when all things fall into place, you're really stuck and its like some angels fall around you to help? Anyway, that's what it felt like.. Each guy said no, and the one guy with the rusty white pick up and chain was the one who spoke to me the most. Piercing blue eyes, and he just said, 'No thanks. I've been doing this all week, and it will come back to me in another way'. 

I said, 'It's god's work then I guess... He says.. Yeah, you got it,' then turned around and started to pump his gas. I couldn't believe it. Was so magical.. In a time of real emergency, (and come on, I'm thinking, we all wouldn't mind a twenty and case of beer right now..esp when you're in a monumental snow storm of the decade) was something that I'll never forget. 

Its one of the MAIN reasons why I love Woodstock so much. There's this spiritual love in a world today that can be be really dark. You can forget that life even has this sort of karmic/cosmic energy. So Wednesday's Woodstock Blog goes out to these four guys who helped us out of a hole (literally so to speak), so we could ski one of the best mash potatoe powder days of my life. 

~KD - photo taken on 28 this weekend.