Feb 15, 2015
Chelan is a town here in Washington State that is famous for its huge lake. Its a forty five minute drive from where we live, and about 500 ft higher. To get to Chelan, we travel right along the Columbia river, and then wind up through some steep hills, before dropping down towards the lake. Many of these hills are wild, and still covered in snow. Last weekend I went up with my husband to one of these places, called Bear Mountain. As my husband is a hunter, he wanted to put out some apples and salt blocks for the deer. So, we loaded up(1) our little four wheeler, and headed up a dirt track. I drove while my husband looked around for deer, but for a while, there was no sign of them. What we did see was lots and lots of snow. It was like a Christmas scene from a chocolate box. We found the group of trees where we needed to dump(2) the apples and salt, and headed back. Well, that was the plan. We tried to head back. What we hadn't realized was that we had parked in deep snow. We were stuck. We tried reversing. That didn't work. We tried going to the left, and we tried going to the right. We pushed, and we pulled. By now, my husband was using some interesting words for the snow.
So, we sat and thought about our situation. I looked around for a solution. The snow was so soft and deep, and underneath, near the ground, it was compact and icy. The wheels just kept on slipping. What were we going to do? "That's it!" I said, "Let's put twigs under the wheels." There were large, dry bushes all around near the trees. So we snapped lots of twigs(3) and stuffed them under the wheels. It worked! The wheels turned without slipping, and we were able to get out of our deep, white trap. We drove back, slipping here and there, and getting sucked into deep patches of snow, but we managed to get back to our truck. As we left, the sun came out, and the snow shone brightly. I remembered hearing that the Eskimos have 50 words for snow. I'm not sure if that's true, but I certainly heard about ten to fifteen unusual words from my husband about it on our trip. As we came down the mountain, we laughed about getting stuck, and both decided that the only word we needed for the snow, at that point, was 'magnificent'.
1. 'To load up' is a verb that we often use, meaning to put or pack items onto a vehicle. It is a general verb that can be used with many different products: food, furniture, rocks, soil, supplies, or anything really. We also use it figuratively, especially to express filling a plate with food. Often you can miss out the 'up'.
a. We loaded up the truck with soil for our back garden project.
b. You can load up your plate with food; we have plenty.
c. We loaded our car with our neighbor's boxes to help him move to his new house.
2. 'To dump' is a verb that means several things: to throw away, to unload, and to finish a relationship.
a. Just dump that old bicycle. Its broken, so get rid of it.
b. We drove the truck full of soil to the back garden and dumped the soil.
c. She dumped her boyfriend after only one week!
3. 'We snapped lots of twigs'. Here 'to snap' means 'to break'; it is a verb that describes the sound of breaking something thin and wooden. So it is perfect to use with 'twig' which is a small branch.
a. I snapped my fingers and my dog stopped running and sat down.
b. I snapped off the extra twigs from the bottom of the tree.
c. He fell off the roof and snapped his wrist!
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