by Pamela Ashton

Created on: January 11, 2010

I spent most of my growing up years in Alaska, in areas that were at that time considered remote. Many still are. As a child in Valdez, I experienced some of the snowiest winters on the planet. I can still picture the houses completely buried in the heavy snows and drifts; my father would crawl out an upstairs window, and join the other men from town, a small army with shovels.  They would dig steps down to the doors of the homes so people could get in and out. We never considered this being snowed in; with the exception of having to take the time to dig out, the wintry weather never slowed the pace of life. We made our way on snowshoes and with sleds, and didn’t think much more about it.  There were, later on,  a few instances when our family lives were affected by being snowed in.  It is ironic to me that none of them occurred in Alaska.

In my late teen years, I moved with my parents to a cozy little home  right along the Snake River just above the Hell’s Canyon Dam. I don’t know if the name came with the place or if we just chose to call it Thorn Flats. Access to Thorn Flats was by a single lane, bumpy dirt and gravel road that ran from tiny Oxbow, Oregon to a cul-de-sac and back. There were only a few homes along the road; originally, it had run to a small town called Homestead that was a ghost town when we lived there. The Idaho side of the Snake was where the main road ran, down to the famed Hell’s Canyon Dam. Our side of the river received very little traffic. In one place the road ran through a small tunnel. Winters were often long and accompanied with deep snows and windy, cold days.

One winter, the snows began in the middle of the night, and by morning had clogged the little one lane road to impassibility. By the middle of the day, the tunnel was closed by both the snow, and rock that had shifted loose and fallen. Toward evening, the single power line providing light and communication to the “outside” world failed. My parents and I were stranded in a world of unending white. And still it snowed. We were fortunate to have propane in the tank outside to provide heat; and my stepmother was a proficient cook on a woodstove, having learned the skill in her youth. My dad was in poor health.  He  huddled by the stove in the small living room, constantly turning up the heat until Mom or I would walk by and tweak it down a notch or two, as it became too hot to be of comfort. There were

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