Is there anything sillier, or more joyful, than a bunch of kids who have never seen snow encountering piles of it for the first time in its natural setting?

In elementary school, we planned a Scout trip into the mountains during winter. Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest is about two and a half hours' drive east from Los Angeles. "In good traffic." Nobody knows the distance between places in L.A. Everything is measured in travel time, with or without freeways, considering time of day and weather or traffic conditions.

This was a chance for all of us, family and friends, to experience snow. Our mother, who was the Girl Scout leader of our troop, plus another mom, drove the neighborhood girls, and Dad took the Boy Scouts. Each group had a spacious cabin booked for a long weekend.

It wasn't snowing when we arrived in the mountains and the roads had been plowed, so we had no problem finding our destinations. Outside, there were several feet of new snow on the ground. We piled out of the cars into fluffy white stuff and began exploring. We ran around and kicked at the drifts with our boots. We slid on the icy spots. Our neighbors had a sled that we had brought along. Everyone else tried sliding downhill on pieces of cardboard.

Of course, we had to eat some snow, then lie down and move our arms up and down to make angel prints. We crunched handfuls together into snowballs and spheres for snow people. A couple of girls went to ask the adults if there were any shovels to help dig snow forts. After a bit of snow warfare, we had to ban snowballs with rocks inside.

When we finally got cold and hungry, we were glad to find out that the cabins were well heated and had places to hang our wet gloves and clothes. As we thawed and dripped, we remembered that snow and ice were frozen water. Indoors, we did lots of Girl Scout singing and cooking. We had bread and eggs for toad-in-the-hole, and meat and veggies to chop up for pocket meals. On trips we always brought oranges, the makings for PBJ sandwiches, and lots of those little cereal boxes which open in the front to pour in some milk.

We played hard on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, it started to snow, and we finally had to go inside. Mom heated up some of the maple syrup she had brought for pancakes. We packed snow into pie pans, and she poured the syrup on top to make maple sugar candy.

We were supposed to pack up on Monday after breakfast, but the road hadn't been plowed and there was a lot of new snow. It was too far to walk to the boys' cabin, but both cabins had telephones.

We overheard Mom talking to Dad. "We have enough food for a couple of days if the kids still want to eat PBJ sandwiches and cold cereal. We can stay warm, and they can still play in the snow just outside the door. Too bad the shovel is too small to clear much of a path. We should be fine unless something else happens. You?"

"We're about the same," we could hear Dad say. Then, we heard voices in the background.

"Dad. Dad. Richard's letting Dean scratch his back. You told him to stop. I'm not scratching my bumps."

"Guess I need to see what's happening. Love you." Dad hung up the phone.

Now I could talk to Mom.

"Mom. Angie's itchy. Do we have baby aspirin? Suzie has a headache." Somebody behind me was singing about "chicky pops", and I didn't think it was a breakfast cereal jingle.

Mom called Dad again. "Marcia and two other girls have chicken pox."

"Our boys and at least one more have it, too. Thank goodness we have calamine lotion in the first aid kits. Looks like our long weekend is getting a lot longer."

~ Marcia Ehinger