Jon slid to the edge of the slope and set his ski pole for a good shove.

On the hillside behind the twelve-year-old, his brothers readied a sledge-load of birch twigs for skidding down the mountain. One younger brother sat atop the twig pile, the other perched on the draft horse's back drumming his heels.

Their older brother hauled on the sledge's drag line, ready to brake as needed. "Tell Far," Halvor Lamefoot called, "that I think the critter's only half-grown!"

Jon nodded, then launched into a long glide down the slopes of Homme's Crest, carrying glum news. The brothers had just found a trail of paw prints across a high mountain pasture, heading in the direction of the one lower meadow thawed out enough for the flocks to find grazing. Now more than ever the folks at Homme farm needed to protect every single lamb and kid. Their future already looked bleak. They didn't need this newest peril.

Jon took a switchback too fast and ran smack into a young fir. He dusted himself off and set out again, chafing at his slow progress. He wished it was easier to make turns. "What good is flying like an otter over the snow," he muttered, "if you can only go in a straight line? No straight lines coming down from Homme's Crest!" The flexible leather straps of the boot bindings made it difficult to angle the skis off in a new direction.

The snow thinned as Jon approached the farmyard, and he had to watch out for the stony grave-mounds beside the path. He sailed right past the buildings and down to the lowest field. Farfar Halvor often said he once grew wheat there on the most wind-sheltered, sun-exposed plot on their lands. Jon found his father Torjus working the farm's other horse, dragging the harrow, trying to scrape an untimely blanket of snow from the middle of the barley field.

"Far!" Jon called. "A lynx! We found tracks. It's heading for the lower pasture!"

Torjus dropped the reins and threw his hands toward the sludge-gray skies. "What next? Fire and brimstone?"

"Well, that would melt the snow!" Jon said with a grin, then added, "A half-grown lynx, Lamefoot thinks."

"Get on up to the house," Torjus said as he unharnessed the horse, "and bring out my rifle while I try to trigger that brimstone with a round of cursing. Snow in July!" Muttering a string of oaths, the fifty-one-year-old farmer led the plowhorse toward the barn.

Jon slogged toward the house. Snowflakes still whirled on the chilly breeze. He caught one on his tongue – and hoped that wouldn't be his only fare for the day. The storage lofts were nearly empty, and it looked like there might not be an autumn crop to refill the shelves. No harvest to tide Homme farm over another year.

Birch twigs might keep the livestock alive, but what would the family eat when the food ran out?

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BEHIND THE SCENES

In Norway, back in the "old days," you skied with one long ski pole, gripped in both hands.

Livestock listed for Homme farm in 1657: 1 horse, 4 cows, 7 sheep, 2 goats.

"Lamefoot" is a fictional nickname. The records don't tell how people kept all the different Halvors straight! This Halvor, though the eldest son, did not inherit Homme. He never married.

1816 came to be widely known as The Year Without a Summer.

Photo by Federico Di Dio photography on Unsplash.com