Speaking of where there's a Will there's a way

Sailing over the snow-covered hills and dales on the back of a sled, marveling at the difference a good trail and snow machine makes, pleased at least today not to be snowshoeing, feeling my spirits climb, I’m soon delivered to the cabin where we will spend the week before Christmas ready and eager to get into all the Christmas-at-the-cabin plans, making good use of the snow, baking cookies, feeding the birds, Christmas Eve dinner with neighbors. I open the front door and am immediately confronted with something awry.  My first thought was an earthquake, clutter on the floor, a pitcher, a frying pan upside down, but the array of tea boxes still sitting nicely on the shelf testified to no earthquake. As I began to pick things up, I saw that most of the items came from the vicinity of the refrigerator.

We have a propane refrigerator of the sort that is half size and usually found under the counter in a home rec-room bar or in a RV. Ours is mounted above the counter which puts it at eye level, more convenient when you need to get something from it. The top of it is the height of home refrigerators. When we leave the cabin we prop the door open to keep it aired out. Because freezing temperatures will take over the cabin when we are not there keeping a fire going, we leave things that will store well when frozen.  I started to close the door and stopped short at the look of the box of butter, the side torn away jaggedly. Two sticks were missing. Our puzzle had an answer. Weasie( our pet name for weasel) was up to his old tricks.

My thoughts were filled with an image many years ago of a box of butter traveling over the snow. I was looking out the cabin window and was stunned to see the butter jerk forward, stop, then jerk forward again, like it had its own little feet, some times making two or three little jerks forward at a time, and on it went  moving ever further from the cabin. It was a snowy day so I didn’t clearly see the weasel tugging away with his prize until I caught sight of the black tip of his tail waving in the air like a flag. When my senses returned I ran for the butter to be greeted by the nasty sounds of a perturbed fiesty little creature. Weasels, are actually endearing little animals, adorable little faces and tiny mickey-mouse like ears. In winter they wear their ermine coat of white. Like little kittens they invite cuddling, except that they won’t let you get close. Dan once warned me that they have a nasty bite so I hesitated at his growls and threats. Every time I reached forward to grab the butter he’d let go with a barrage of complaints. In the end he won and I stood there in the snow watching him take home his feast wondering how long it would be before I could get to town and replenish the butter.
Now I wondered if Dan had packed butter with our supplies. “I thought we had some”, was his answer.
The cabin isn’t quite the cabin until the cookie jar is filled with chocolate chips. Gifts of Christmas cookies to all the neighbors as well as the train conductor and engineer were also in my plans. Turkey dinner needed stuffing and mashed potatoes all of which need lots of butter. The two sticks of butter Weasie left us wasn’t going to do it. Butter became the primary topic of conversation.
Will remembered making cookies with a recipe from his girlfriends grandmother that used bacon fat and oil. Horrors. What would Julia say? Then he produced the recipe on his handy I-phone gadget and with him and Dan lusting for chocolate chip cookies I decided nothing ventured, nothing gained. I “creamed” the bacon fat and sugar also using Crisco and added some molasses and sour cream called for in the recipe probably to cover the taste of bacon fat. The cookies tasted exactly like Toll House chocolate chips! But I couldn’t help noticing some intangible difference, maybe in the texture or maybe in the mind offended by the aesthetics of cookies using anything but pure butter.
We had solved the problem for chocolate chips but bacon fat was not going into my Christmas cookies so another solution was devised. Tim and Carol lived three miles down the river and Dan was sure they had lots of butter. Dan decided he and Will would  put in the trail to Tim and Carol’s cabin ostensibly to make it easier for them to come to dinner Christmas eve but I’m sure in Dan’s mind it was all about the butter.

Off they went into the snow, Will leading the way  to break trail in front of  Dan making it less likely he would get stuck. They carried with them a chainsaw strapped on the back for any tree-falls blocking the path, a shovel for digging out if they got stuck, snowshoes always for any eventuality rendering the snow machine out of action and the all important invitation for dinner.
In spite of deep snow, four hours later they were back, minor hassles overcome, a pound of butter in the pack. I went to work on Christmas cookies which turned out perfectly until I started to color the frosting. The Christmas tree cookies were turning lime green. Must need more coloring I thought. A few more drops and still no Christmas tree green just deeper lime. Then I tried a separate bowl for a nice Christmas red and got bright pink. As I stood there complaining, without a word, Will picked up the food coloring box and pointed to the large print word NEON.
One of these days I’ll learn not to go shopping without my reading glasses.

The next day Will was sitting in Dan’s recliner and noticed a cold breeze. Pulling the chair out from the wall he found a space where the new cabin extension had separated slightly from the old cabin. Right next to the open space lay a stick of butter too big to fit through the hole. Weasie had  been nibbling away at it trying to get it small enough to squeeze it through. Will went right to work corking the space. We fed the butter to the gray jays.

Christmas eve arrived, the creche was out, decorations hung in the window, greens decorated the front door, the turkey was in the oven and one challenge remained. The cabin winter tradition of homemade ice cream. We had two ice cream makers, one which had a tub with its refrigerant that needed very cold temperatures to work and another that used rock salt and snow and required more work of whipping to keep it crystal free. We had forgotten the frozen strawberries, but found a can of peaches in the pantry. Peach it would be. All week Will kept trying the one that had its own refrigerant. It never was quite cold enough. Then Christmas eve arrived at 5 below. Great. There was one last momentary panic at a shortage of vanilla, it had gone mostly into the cookies, when Dan suggested adding a little gin since vanilla abstract is mostly alcohol, but for me that was worse than the bacon fat. We used a tiny bit of vermouth instead. The ice cream was  perfect, creamy and delicious.
Right on time Tim and Carol, all bundled up against the cold, rolled into the front yard on their machines, praising the excellent trail Dan and Will had provided, carrying a box of home made peanut butter fudge. A short time later, I saw Jason snow shoeing our way from up the creek. His gift a jar of blueberries he had picked in the fall.
The next day, Christmas day, we would go back to town where our presents waited under the tree happy to have had another peaceful Christmasey  Christmas at the cabin at Lane Creek.