snowmobile stories

[asakiyume]

I went walking at dusk yesterday. The train whistle was sounding nearby. Clear the roads, clear the tracks, coming through. Coming through slowly. It was the Connecticut and Southern. I stepped off the trail and watched them go by--this pack was driven by slim young guys (sometimes it's fathers and young kids--but those packs are usually diurnal and travel on weekends) in complete snowmobile suits that made them look like Power Rangers. They waved as they went by, and I waved back, and thought of snowmobile legends.

Not my snowmobilers--these ones hail from Buffalo--but very like them.(Source)


Snowmobile Legends

Snowmobiler and Snow Woman

A beautiful young woman, wearing a white parka trimmed with white fur and a white knitted cap, is standing at the edge of the trail, watching the snowmobiles go by, and one stops, and the driver says, "Want a ride?" She smiles brightly and says "I'd love one!" And she gets on and wraps her winter-cold arms around the driver, and they go speeding through the woods. When at last, chilled to the bone, the driver stops and turns to ask if maybe she'd like to join him at the diner for some coffee, he finds there's no one there--just a drift of snow.

Fisher-Cat Selkie Snowmobiler

She snowmobiles down all the trails, searching out good-looking guys--maybe they're hunters, or maybe they're cutting wood, or maybe they're snowshoers. Or maybe they're just walking along the trail because they've lent their car to a friend and this is a shortcut home.

Anyway. She pulls up alongside and asks if they want a ride. She's got glinting black mustelid eyes and a knowing smile, and whatever guy she asks hops on willingly, and after zooming over snowy fields and across frozen ponds and streams, she asks her passenger if he'd like to come back to her place. She feeds him porcupine stew and leads him to her bed, which is covered by a blanket of stitched rabbit skins, and they exhaust themselves in lovemaking.

. . . And she doesn't eat him, and he doesn't find her fisher cat skin and steal it. No: she drives him back to town along the trails as the sun is rising the next morning.

"Maybe we can get together again sometime," he says, desperate and ardent, and she nods and says, "Yeah, maybe so," but it has never yet happened. She is always on the prowl for someone new.

Snowmobile highwaymen
In the winter of 1981, there were a string of thefts of convenience stores in northern New York and Vermont, and across the border in Quebec. The convenience stores were all near well-traveled snowmobile trails. The thieves would tie up the cashier and any hapless patrons or other staff, and make off on foot with rolls of scratch tickets and the contents of the cash register. They'd head straight for the snowmobile trail, and when a pack of no more than two or three snowmobiles came by, one member of the gang would flag them down. When they stopped, the other members of the gang would appear, guns in hand, push the riders from their seats, and commandeer the snowmobiles. Many miles later, presumably near their hideout, the thieves would jump off, sending the snowmobiles on, riderless, with a cord wrapped round the throttle to keep it down.

They were never caught.

Comments

[oiktirmos.livejournal.com]

Snowmobiler and Snow Woman
I lived that legend in the forest, if you recall. I wonder if it was the same woman taking on a different form – instead of a white parka trimmed with white fur and a white knitted cap, black clothing, long black hair - appropriate to the woods.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I do remember! No story but reality is stranger.

[cecile-c.livejournal.com]

... what they never said was that, once they sent on the snowmobiles, some of them kept roaming the countryside, terrorising people into robbing convenience stores for them, and nobody ever knew how literal the phrase "snowmobile gang" actually was ;) (or maybe I've just had too much poutine and beer and I'm imagining strange things ;))

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes, some reporters wanted to put that in the follow-up reports, but they received ominous bloody gifts by their garage doors and thought better of it.

(Poutine and beer speak true!)

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

They do look very like Power Rangers!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Right? "Go, go, snow-mo-bee-lers!"**

**To the tune of the Power Rangers' song.

[sovay]

and she nods and says, "Yeah, maybe so," but it has never yet happened. She is always on the prowl for someone new.

FISHER-CAT SELKIE SNOWMOBILER!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Feel like a little porcupine stew?

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

That one is also my favorite.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

How about that one where the lost child is rescued by a rider who never speaks or raises their visor, and then the child's parent try to follow the trail, they find the snowmobile, helmet and riding clothes by an abandoned hut that hasn't been lived in for decades?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

YES! HOW COULD I FORGET THAT EXCELLENT ONE?!

[seajules]

*is utterly delighted*

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

:-)

I'm really glad they appealed.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I love these. I've been snowmobiling, once, but it was a favorite of my dad's family. My great-great uncle Tryg took his out every winter until he was too frail to manage them, and I'm pretty sure that was the year he passed. He was 96.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps he ran off with a fisher cat selkie. I bet he did, that old devil.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

He sounds like just the sort of guy the fisher-cat selkie snowmobiler would like to spirit off into her lair.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'd like to try it one day.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I love these--except being robbed. (But that can happen here as summer is sadly upon us, sigh. More drought.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What sort of magics will it take to end the drought, I wonder....

[ericmarin.livejournal.com]

I really like the first two legends. :-)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad!

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

I was relieved that she didn't eat him!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Nah, she prefers chipmunks, other small rodents, and the occasional porcupine :-)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I am unutterably charmed by these. :) Even/especially the spooky ones.

Re:

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad you did. I had fun inventing them.