Sir Sisyphus Hillary

I hate snow. ...or rather I hate day-old snow. The snow we got on Saturday has turned into hard packed clumps, all dirty brown and asphalt gray. It's disgusting. It's not pretty and magical anymore.

But Saturday it was a different story. It had been coming down in flurries all day, and these were big flake flurries. All the leaves have long since lost their grip and the trees out on the tot-lot were barren, but filled with red-breasted robins. By Saturday night at 10 o'clock, I had made a resolution.

Stephan loves snow. He'd been waiting all winter for this snow fall. I was exhausted due to alot of contributing factors - and still hadn't had my quiet time for the day either - but decided no matter how late it got, we definitely had to go out and romp in this snow.

I had my quiet time and around 11 I asked Stephan if he wanted to go out in the snow. I don't think he believed that I was serious, being as I historically hate the snow and the cold and those things are so much worse at night. But nonetheless, 4 gaiters, 2 pairs of boots, 2 jackets, 4 gloves, 2 pairs of rain pants, 2 hats and a scarf later we stumbled out into the knee deep snow.

At first we just ran for all we were worth, tripping and stumbling, flinging snow shrapnel and more planned snow balls. Stephan took a nasty spill once, and I started rolling up another snow ball. As I rolled, the ball grew and grew. "Wanna make a snowman?" I asked. "Sure!" he replied. We both started rolling snow balls. They quickly became snow boulders. Mine's diameter was safely up to my chest. I entertained the pipedream of rolling the biggest snow boulder of all time and leaving it to baffle people in the morning, but soon I had to start rolling it down hill to make the pushing easier. Then I had to enlist Stephan to get it back up those same hills. I let go the dream of the biggest snow bloulder ever when the boulder started pushing me instead of me pushing it. When it reached a mass that we couldn't move at all anymore we picked a spot for it and moved on to the middle section. That one was about to my waist when we stopped (for similar immobilizing reasons).

This was where luck turned on us. We were really tired (it was almost midnight by this point), we'd already been pushing a chest-high snow boulder around for a half hour, and this present snow boulder had to be lifted onto the first one. The success of the snow man venture depended on getting that boulder atop the other. After several attempts at team work and brute force, we decided to appeal to my best friend (and Stephan's worst aggitator):

Physics.

The only way we could move this boulder was by rolling it. So we rolled it up onto the slide of the playground. We thought with a little elevation we could lift it, but were unsuccessful. I then had the brilliant idea of rolling the boulder onto the back of a kneeling Stephan, then having him crawl over to the first boulder while I kept it steady atop him. Again unsuccessful. We ended up dragging a bench out of the nearby gazebo and rolling the boulder onto that (from the slide), then tilting the bench so the seat and back formed a V. In this way we shinnied the bench over to the base boulder, and leanign the bench up against it, were able to use the bench as a ramp to man-handle the mid section atop the base.

"Get round the other side!" Stephan yelled to me. I was around fast enough to prevent the boulder from rolling right off the back and onto the ground again. It was at that time I suggested naming the snowman Sisyphus.

Stephan held the middle boulder in place while I packed the joint with snow. We kept packing until the two boulder shapes were visibly gone and we pretty much had a cylinder. We rolled the head and hoisted it (with much less drama) on top, again nearly pushing it right over top and onto the ground again. Again I packed snow while Stephan steadied the ball (I was just barely able to reach it by this point, the thing was so tall).

Now we had our skeleton. It was already so late that we'd forgotten about 'trying to get to bed at a reasonable time' and were completely absorbed in our project. We packed snow on the snowman for shoulders and arms holding his bulging belly, and Stephan made two big feet. I fashioned a fez-like beanie and capped our man (standing on a bench, of course). Stephan added a pom-pom (also standing on a bench).

The night-owls among our neighbors (who'd been sitting at their kitchen tables watching us most of the time) started coming out on their balconies and watching. We greeted them and chatted until their cigarettes were gone and they retired. Back to work.

We pulled the bench up around Sisyphus' front and gave him a real face: a protruding nose, a brow line, cheekbones and a big, open-mouth smile. He was done.

We went in and got the camera and took pictures. It had started snowing again by this time, so there are alot of flecks in teh pictures, but you can see that the snowman is easily eight or nine feet tall. That's when I suggested the last name Hillary. Stephan concented.

We fell asleep pretty quickly upon retiring. I have to get up at 6 to take a time-sensitive medication, and when I did I noticed that the duvet comforter hadn't moved an inch from where I'd neatly laid it while making the bed the day before. We'd slipped under it and slept so sound we hadn't dilodged it at all. That's pretty unusual for us. We sometimes end up with the sheets hanging off one side and the comforter trailing into the closet. Dont' ask me how it happens.

When we rose for breakfast the next morning we had another surprise. You can imagine this snowman mopped up most of the snow in the playground area. When we looked out the window Sunday morning, all the tracks were gone. Sisyphus stood in the middle of a pure, unadulterated snow field. It was almost eerie. Kinda like crop circles, but it was a 9-foot snow man.

We went out in the morning and snapped a few more pictures, both in our hearts knowing what would happen to the fruit of our labor later that day. We were right. By 3 that afternoon Sisyphus was destroyed by some punk kids in our neighborhood. I don't know what it is about children that they have to destroy things. Oh well. God is soveriegn. We didn't actually see it happen, but Stephan noticed Sisyphus sections rolled to the other side of the lot. We actually had some respect for the scoundrels after that, considering that 2 adults had to really put their shoulders to those boulders to make them move. It must have taken 3 or 4 of the little buggers. It certianly took a ralley of strength and teamwork, and for that I tip my hat to them.

So why bother, you may ask? Well, in the immortal words of Sisyphus' surname sake, "Because it was there."