Caribou Poker Run

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I stare outside and I see snow falling on the ground. It takes me back to a time when I was younger, I seriously mean when I was quite young… around five I’m guessing. A time where I wasn’t bullied, wasn’t harassed, wasn’t the way am I now. Heh, it’s funny how everyone changes as they grow.  Anyway what I’m remembering when I see the snow covered outdoors is this. A gathering of snow machines, yellows, blues, and blacks…. All over the school parking lot and there was excitement in the air.

My cousin and I were the only children there, which was funny but whatever. So it was the Annual Caribou Poker Run…. Well it was called Caribou Poker run since the race took place in the Caribou Hills which surround the village that I grew up in. Anyway our Dad’s did the run nearly every year and this year they thought that we were old enough to join them; as long as we rode with them everything would be fine.

So off we went, my cousin with his dad on um… well I really don’t remember what brand my uncle had but I do remember the brand of snow machine that my dad had. It was a Polaris… black with a little bit of purple and blue; quite frankly sine I’ve moved to Anchorage I don’t see snow machines anymore, but more on that subject later. We went blazing down the road toward the Hills, my cousin and I waved to each other since we knew sooner or later we would wind up being separated during this trip.

I clung to my dad’s back as we speed up; luckily it had snowed the night before so there was a nice layer of powdery snow. Why do I say this is because we went over a jump and I wound up in the snow, but that was fun now that I’m writing about it and have grown up. But when I was five, I didn’t know what happened so I was just sobbing and bawling my head off. Dad quickly turned around and grabbed me telling me that everything would be all right; that I only fell off the snow machine and everything was fine.

He put me in front and drove on to the next checkpoints, yeah there were checkpoints to, well you know rest, relax, get your next card, warm up etc. So we drove around getting to all the checkpoints then at the last one you place your cards on the table and play a round of poker with your cards and whoever has the highest hand…. Winning hand? I’m not sure never played poker before but yeah, so whoever got the highest hand won the prize.  Everyone gets a congratulations and hope you had fun sort of thing. Then we had to head back home… there was one incident during the run. I think that someone’s snow machine broke down so they had whatever staff come and pull him out… He actually had a light green snow machine if I remember correctly but that was long time ago…

That’s what snow makes me remember especially when its coming down in such pretty little powdery flakes.