My Worst Case Scenario Manual.

I am on vacation with my friend Kimmy's family, the Dumonts. I have mentioned them before, they have two dogs; The first is Molly, the Dumont's 13-year old, emaciated dog that seems to be suffering from ADD and dimensia who reminds me of a 95-year old female P.E. teacher who smokes and calls her male students "sonny". The other is Maddie, a 9-year old Maltese. Due to the Dumont's busy schedule, they thought it best to not give Maddie the high maintenance, long, silky fur style that most Maltese's have. Instead, Maddie sports a raggedy, fur ball type of look, with trimmed bangs that stand on end. Maddie best resembles Jessica Tandy, from Driving Miss Daisy. Maddie is a lapdog, and therefore accompanies the Dumont's on all their travels, including this one. The 15 hour road trip to Denver, CO, where Kimmy lives. We began our drive at 3 a.m. from Orange County. The entire Dumont family are community theater, and musical veterans, so naturally we began our driving listening to Broadway soundtracks...alphabetically. We began with Aida, and pulled into Denver on the Scarlett Pimpernell. I needn't say more.
The mountain house that the Dumont's rented is in the mountains behind Boulder, CO. It is fully stocked with industrial sized bags of food from the Costco trip (inevitable). The last 48 hours has consisted of;

1) A random mountain dog who has wandered/limped/gimped to the house, we have named her Berta, and I believe her to be Maya Angelou incarnate. Please view photo

2) Last night Kimmy, her younger brother Tommy who we call Tomtard, and I drove to Denver International Airport to pick up Robby (Kimmy's older brother), and his girlfriend Alicia. Despite the snow and ice, we made it down the mountain safely....however driving back up the mountain in Kimmy's '98 Chrysler Town and Country van was not so successful. Goldie (the van) began to give way.....'give way' meaning not giving at all. The road was ice and we could not drive up it. We put on the chains and proceeded....20 feet, we proceeded about 20 feet. At one point the guard rail on the mountain road ended, causing me to clutch my inhaler and pray to Yahweh and Santa Claus to get us off the doomed hill. At 3:30am we were forced to give up and stay in Denver for the night.

In crisis like situattions I immediately imagine what it would be like to endure the crisis' worst case scenario. I don't know why I do this.....maybe in an attempt to prepare myself for the horrible outcome that I was sure was coming. Therefore in this particular crisis I imagined how I might fair when we were forced to live out of the van on the side of mountain, like the Boxcar Children (because hey being stranded automatically makes you an orphan....right?). I immediately imagined myself in flannel, making a fire, then I thought to myself 'what if this isnt so easy?', my mental picture quickly shifted to me wearing a bonnet. We were no longer the Boxcar Children, we were the Donner party. The reality of our Oregan Trail crisis really began to sink in. My next thought was food, WHAT WERE WE GOING TO EAT! Kimmy, Tommy and I were still full from the chili and cornbread we had for dinner that evening, but what about Robby and Alicia? I noticed a 1/2 bag of trail mix that Alicia had, that would last either of them 1 day, or both of them 1/2 a day. A day...we were okay for a day. Past that....there was trouble, real trouble. We could try and trap food....but how would we cook it? I don't know how to start a fire, and I've only read Hatchet by Gary Paulson once.....we were doomed. At least we would die together, atleast I had lived a good life thus far....full of love and laughter. My dreams never really came true, but atleast I got to have dreams right? And atleast.....atleast, the snow plows came the next day...and we were only 5 miles from town, and we had cell phone service :) And now here I am sitting on my beautiful upper middle-class American butt, drinking coffee, getting ready to wrap this thing up, so that I can do some pilates.

how did the pioneers do it?.....more like why? My gosh people, its just land.