The Slippery Slope of Country Living: Well some stories just have to be told, even if they aren't about big events in big people's lives. A recent February night was no exception.

I had left my car at the Oshawa dealership near the GO station for routine maintenance and taken the train into the City for work. It was mild. Upon returning to Oshawa at 7:00 p.m. in a heavy downpour, I walked under a too small faded red umbrella to pick up my vehicle, which, it turned out, was not ready and which, it also turned out, would not be ready until the next day. They were happy to provide me with a small courtesy car for the long trek home on wet and slippery roads in the sheer dark... but only after I had signed a contract with a $1000 deductible insurance coverage. What is a wet, tired lawyer to do in such circumstances when there is no one to feed his beasts, my beloved partner being on a beach in Cuba? So I signed the form, but, being a then grumpy lawyer, clandestinely snuck in the precursor to my signature that said "under duress". This went unnoticed.

The 100 km drive home took me off the main highway much earlier because it was far too risky a course. As I progressed north and east, the roads became more and more slushy, although the rain did not appear to be icy. Proudly, after a painstaking journey at a mere 60 km per hour, I saw the cemetery that marked the intersection with our welcoming concession road. I signalled, stopped, and cautiously turned the corner beginning to climb the gradual incline that is our gravel road, often more pothole and mud than gravel. I was greeted with a headlight glistening skating rink of sheer ice. The car's meagre tires began to spin, coaxing the tiny vehicle to a halt, but not a true halt because, by Newton's law, it began to slide backwards. This was not enough. It then, because of the contours of the road, slipped sideways into not so much a ditch as a soft, muddy, slushy shoulder. There it was, embedded as the rain, relentless, pelted down. Reluctantly, I gave up trying to cajole an unwilling and incapable mechanism onward. I saw the welcoming light of the neighbour’s farm ahead ... but this was not a night to bring anyone out from the comforts of home – and to what end? Home was only a short walk away.

I opened the car door and warily put my feet down. Then, on standing, I found myself in full human splendour, sailing quickly down the road before scrambling cartoon-like and falling soaked to the icy surface. In the kafuffle, my ancient umbrella blew away. What to do? Only one thing: Walk the insulting one kilometre distance to our hilltop house. But how? Not on the road which forbade balance. Yes, only in the muddy, mushy ditch edge could I get any traction.

Wetter and wetter, I decided to cross a neighbour's hay field to our house. But then, in the sheer dark, with the howling wind and the pelting rain, I recalled the fine, noble, hungry and too bold wolf that had walked past our kitchen window the weekend before, and I heard in my memory the yapping of the coyotes that had wakened me but three nights previously. This wasn't helped by a recent conversation with a friend about the discovery of a deer carcass, eaten clean, or the fact that my dog had proudly found antlers buried in the remaining snow on our last walk. Now every crunch of the snow became the trail of the hunters, and I was the hunted. I started to run and, in what seemed endless plodding, came to the edge of the field on the other side of the road from the house. I gingerly tested the road and quickly repeated my previous downward descent. Crash. Knapsack flying. Despite the humiliating prospect, only on all fours did I make it to our side of the road and after a number of graceless slips, I managed the final ascent to our door. Having barely escaped the clutches of some chop licking, eye glinting carnivore (or so my rocking chair story shall go), I was greeted by a face licking, body wiggling, tail wagging and very hungry dog. The sanders came in the night. The early morning road was less ice than slush. At 6:30 a.m. I hauled the heavy ash can with its ashen content the one kilometre down the road, and with almost too great and too insulting an ease, drove the tiny car home.