Chautauqua

I’m sitting on a comfy blue couch, looking up at one of the prettiest ceilings I’ve ever seen. It’s a light, red wood that changes color with the time of day, and it towers over me two stories up. I’m in the Great Room of the “Chautauqua House,” Mat’s family’s getaway in the snow-covered hills that surround Chautauqua Lake in lower New York State, and I am in love.

Looking out the eight great windows, I see a snow-covered Eden; three-feet-thick in perfect white, mottled only by the snowmobile tracks we made this morning. In the distance is the lake, looking like an untilled snowfield, and earlier we saw a plane take off from its frozen surface.

In the center of the Great Room is a stone fireplace that stretches the height of the house. The whole house seems built around this pillar of stone, beautiful symmetry on either side. It’s is a bright, cheery house, unpretentious, with wooden accents and unassuming splendor, the kind of place where, if the walls could talk, you would hear the laughter of happy people.

Like I said. I’m in love.

Nate, Dave, Mat, and I are up here with Mat’s dad for the weekend, enjoying the late days of winter. I had to work last night so I ended up driving myself, and it got a little dicey at the end when I was heading down a one-lane road with snow banks on either side and no outlet, no light, and only the stars to light the way. I made it after some Dukes of Hazzard motions with the car, and after a game of ”Scene It: Sports Edition,” which is the equivalent of me in a ballet class, we headed to our rooms and zonked out.

I awoke to fresh donuts, bananas, and juice. Apparently a pipe had burst over the course of the night and Mat and his dad had been up early trying to clear the frozen water out of it. We sat in the sunroom around a little pot-bellied stove and watched Mat’s dad trail the snow with a snowmobile. It’s a rather dangerous affair if you don’t know where you’re going, seeing as, well, just about anything could be under all that snow and you need to have a sense of what’s around you before the snow falls. We suited up and headed out to “the barn,” which is where the trailer and the snowmobiles are kept. We got a crash course (and I choose this name carefully) on snowmobiling, and then proceeded to have the best four hours I’ve had in months.

I can’t really put into words how much fun snowmobiling is. You’re on a jet-powered pair of skis and you’re screaming across fields and over jumps at sixty-plus miles per hour. No joke. My first run I was nervous – I didn’t know how to balance my weight right, and as such I hold the honor of “First to Fall Off His Snowmobile.” [Granted, I was going literally two miles an hour and it was the equivalent of that scene in “Austin Powers” when that guy gets run over by the forklift.] Nate and Dave followed with much more spectacular crashes, and since the snow was so deep it was like falling into, as Dave called it, a “pillow.”

I recovered quickly, glad to have gotten that out of the way, and proceeded to kick ass the rest of the day, taking jumps at ludicrous speeds and nearly flying off many times. It was a natural thing by the end, like I’d been doing it forever. So. Much. Fun.

We followed that with a game of “King of the Hill,” where we proceeded to throw each other off a six-foot-high snow mound in front of the house until we were so exhausted we couldn’t breathe.

After a short nap, the four of us got in the car and headed to Peek’n Peak. This was my second time there, and I still have no idea what the name means. My first time there is a long, hilarious story about trying to teach Jessie how to ski, which I shall not utter here for fear of embarrassing the poor girl. Suffice it to say, we were not on speaking terms until the next day. [I told you to ride the chairlift with me!] Tonight, however, was pitch-perfect, and I had a blissful three hours of skiing down the mountainside.

I’m not a fast skier. I am a large mammal with incredible Newtonian physics governing the massive momentum I gather falling down a hill on toothpicks, and were I to simply unleash, simply let go, I fear for what consequences would befall the world. Therefore, I ski under control. Ski casual, even. Mat accused me of looking bored, but really I was just enjoying a leisurely stroll down the hill. That is, until we went down a black-diamond, my first, and I kicked tail and roared down the mountain just to know that I could in case I had to save someone in a movie someday. Not that the velocity was entirely by choice, seeing as said hill was nigh a 40-degree-angle, but I didn’t fall, not once. Kept it under the hat. Good form, Peter, good form.

We caught a late dinner at Texas Roadhouse in Erie, where I ordered a 24oz steak I am still digesting, and then headed home, watched TV until we couldn’t, and fell fast asleep, sore and elated.

I awoke this morning to Nate’s voice outside the bedroom door. “Hey Martin?”
“Yeah,” I groggily replied.
“If you want to go snowmobiling, you have to be ready in 10 minutes.”

Ten minutes later I was roaring down the slope, my eyes still crusted over, the wind blowing them open. Dave and I flew around for half an hour, hitting 70mph on the cornfields, and I said goodbye to Chautauqua in a roar of sound and snowflakes.

We caught a huge breakfast at Bemus Point, and then made the three-hour ride home, trying to figure out when we could return. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

Like I said. I’m in love. Hope you find your Chautauqua someday.

-m