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The moon was half full and the snowy late fall woods reflected enough light to perform minor surgery, if needed.
In another month with a good base of snow it will be the perfect night for the twice-monthly National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) “Ride for Mirth, Merriment and Absolution” on snow sleds that aren’t too old and aren’t too new and may be just right as long as the spark plugs don’t foul and the windshields don’t fall off, nor do the riders before they can cleanse themselves of bad habits.

On that recent night during deer season I imagined the perfect stillness broken by sputtering sleds as we wind our way down the snowy railroad grade where millions of board feet of pine logs once passed. Except for deer hunters and a few loggers pulling pulp, the country had been forgotten over the years and the hint of roads had been kept at a safe arm’s length. A few shacks and wayward moose were all that remained. Oh, there were deer and wolves and ravens, too. And another bunch of tortured people on a snow sled ride searching for their souls in a world gone crazy with the plunder and spoils of a wayward society.   

Yes, twice a month we will leave the Shack Reclamation Center and its soothing tones and head out into the wilderness to make sure the beast of greed and avarice would thus be tamed. The shack boys always feel that the best way to deal with the folly of Wall Street and Washington is to go out for a nice ride in the snow with the saints and sinners, to negotiate their way through the trees with eyes closed and hopes up, to levitate above the financial doom and gloom and re-emerge on the other side, a nation and a people reborn.
We will do the snow dance for ample snow so as not to delay the rides at all. We all feel a good trail ride could repair the nation, if only we were allowed to lead the way on our old sleds on narrow trails that grip the landscape like a pair of good old shoes.

Moral turpitude can only be saved when the damned are brought to bear on a trail filled with the tracks of deer and wolf. There is a profound and blinding simplicity, free of greed and avarice, when the animals move through the country chasing and avoiding each other in a matter of absolute survival.
One of the first damned souls to take the ride with us several years ago was a corporate raider who sold his children into slavery because the interest rates were killing him. He came across the track of a wolf nearly the size of his hand and wondered aloud why the animal would simply depart a trail littered with the tracks of deer, a convenient trail, only to plunge into snow that was as deep as its belly. The deer eventually did the same thing, simply wandering along the packed trail only to disappear into the deep snow and uncertainty.
He was born again, found his moral compass, when it dawned on him that the animals, unlike most men, aren’t deterred by the convenience of trails. They are moved by the larger whims of the world, the wind, the scents, the barometric pressure, the season, to simply move in a direction, a destination that never ends until they are a mere pile of bones on the forest floor. The trail is but a pleasant diversion, a chance to stretch the legs, in the lifelong song of being alive in the symphony of the natural world.       

The simplicity startled him. In his three-piece Carhartt coveralls, an old 1972 Ski-Doo at his side, he immediately understood the galaxy of emotions collapsing within him and then being flung outward again. “I’ve been a putz,” he said, hanging his head. Ring up another one for the Camp Shack Reclamation Center. Since then, thousands have been saved.

If you’re feeling a bit empty, a bit disoriented with the way things are and what you believe, join NUFA’s “Rides for Mirth, Merriment and Absolution” every other Saturday through snow season.
You’ll know right where the trail starts and what time to be there.