BUDDHIST ROAD PATROL by Peter Shelton, Silverton Mountain Journal, Jan. 18, 2002

The Rōbert [Cholo] Report (pron: Rō'bear Re'por)

Avalanche forecaster Jerry Roberts and I are riding in his orange welfare rig.  We’re on our way to check storm boards for recent snow accumulation totals.  It’s the middle of the night.  Our tires leave tracks several inches deep.  Snowflakes in the air stop, eerily, strobe-like, in each sweep of the yellow flossing light on the roof…..

“3-Mary-14, this is 3-Mary 51.  Come in Doug.”  “Ya, Jerry, this is 14.  I’m over in Ironton Park on my way up.  It’s snowing pretty hard.  Visibility is pretty poor.  See you on the pass.”

“I’ve got a lot of respect for the plow drivers,”  Jerry says working the defroster to keep the wipers from icing up completely.  “Man, that’s a lonely, hateful job.  Ninety percent boredom and 10 percent terror.”

READ PETER’S ARTICLE

Peter Shelton (far right) enjoying a Rio Blanco breakfast with Tim and rŌbert.

View original post

2 thoughts on “BUDDHIST ROAD PATROL by Peter Shelton, Silverton Mountain Journal, Jan. 18, 2002

  1. Damn. Peter Shelton is such a master crafter as a writer, sprinkling Jerry’s impromptu haiku through the text and even adding to one, renga style. I can hear the “hissing hydraulics” of the snowplow and smell the delight of the “plank rats.” Bravo for bringing this back to us

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s