Dad stopped so suddenly the log we carried nearly slid from my gloved grip. I staggered in the snow.

His head cocked.

Nothing to hear but the kids playing chase through the aisles of leafless cottonwoods rising to the west.

He sniffed the air.

Nothing to smell but the frigid snap of winter.

Dad dropped his end of the log and roared toward the woods, "Everybody to the truck! We gotta go!"

Dad wasn't one to roar, most days. The kids cut their laughter. I heard their footsteps crunching at a run.

"Timber needs chaining, Norval," he barked. "No, leave this one."

We ran to the old pickup, its bed partly piled with deadwood scavenged on this far bank of the Wind River.

I helped wrangle chains. "Not a full load yet!" Not worth going to town without the back piled high, Dad always said. Had to get enough in trade for the firewood to offset gasoline needed for the thirty-mile round trip.

"No time to get more," Dad said, his lips stretched thin. "I smell a Chinook coming."

Wayne burst into sight, carrying Ada piggyback, Adrian running close behind.

Dad boosted Ada into the front. Us three boys clambered up on top of the load. We'd lashed it tight. The logs stayed steady beneath us.

Dad started up the old jalopy and took off, bouncing and jouncing over tussocks and half-rotted stumps. We hung on tight. "Chinook coming," I told my brothers.

"What's that?" asked seven-year-old Adrian. "Indians?"

"An Indian word," I said. "Means a warm wind."

"Warm?" Wayne said. "Good! I'm about froze solid!"

"Not good when on the wrong side of the river!"

We'd just had three months of temperatures plunging to thirty below. The river's frozen surface made a fair road to reach this otherwise inaccessible woodland. I wondered why Dad was stopping now, instead of racing across to our own side.

"Everybody out," he ordered. "Walk overl. Hurry! Norval, when the truck comes across, you jump in. Take it out of gear and wait for me."

I nodded and led the youngsters over the river's slick ice. "Go on," I told them, pointing up the bank. "Stay outta the way."

On the far side, Dad revved up the truck and started it across the river, jumping out before it had gone far. The jalopy shimmied at one smooth stretch but kept on coming.

I angled for the driver's side. Dad had left the door hanging open. I jumped up on the running board as soon as it hit land, climbed in and took it out of gear. Dad had pulled the hand throttle out to keep her moving. I pushed it halfway in, and the engine sank to an idle.

Dad came running across the river. "Well done," he puffed. "Us and the timber, safe across."

Booming sounded far to the south. By the time we pulled up at our cabin in the canyon, that ice was breaking up right where we had crossed it.

.

Adapted from my father's life story as told in: "Hang On Tight: Keeping Ahead During the Great Depression"

This event may have happened in 1943, give or take a year or two. My father Norval would have been 13, Wayne, nine, and the twins, seven. His older sister must have stayed home with Mom, and his four older brothers were in the military.

The Wind River runs through the Wind River Canyon from south to north. The town of Thermopolis, Wyoming, lies fifteen miles north of my grandparents' side-canyon homestead, which technically sits on the Shoshoni Indian Reservation. They had bought the unwanted land before laws were enacted banning sales to non-Native Americans.

My grandparents weren't shiftless hicks. He was trained and certified to run steam engines, as found in heavy farm machinery. (Then along came diesel technology.) Both of them were certified schoolteachers. But during the Great Depression they had to scrabble to make a living.

My grandfather traded firewood for anything folk had to offer. After taking one goat in trade, other people figured him a good place to offload the critters, and before long they had a whole flock of goats that got into all kinds of mischief. But that's a whole nuther story.