Frozen toes and mangers-Merry Christmas 2020

Girl on tracks near St. Elmo

I love to imagine what it would have been like to live in the time when the C&S narrow gauge was alive and kicking, especially the winter time.  

For me, it's fun to imagine living out stories like those of Charlotte Marrifield, who lived in St. Elmo.  "We very often skied down the hill to go to school.  We had to jump the railroad tracks and we would land in very deep snow.  The trainmen shoveled off the tracks in to twelve or fifteen foot piles on either side of the rails.  One morning my younger brother, when making the jump, landed on the other side of the tracks, upside down buried in the snow.  All I could see were his skis sticking up out of the snow!"

Other times, though, I think of the terrible challenge of running trains in that awful weather.  

Charles C. Squires remembers, "One bitter cold morning with the thermometer indicating 38 degrees

bucking snow above Tunnel Gulch

below zero, we were called to leave Gunnison at 3am.....At Woodstock Tank [,While working on a problem on the last car, my partner] sat down on the edge of the car with his feet hanging over the side of the car.  I told him had had better get up and keep moving about to keep the blood in circulation....After we had set out our train at Hancock and returned to Alpine Tunnel, we all went into the depot for orders and were hovering around the stove when my partner discovered that his feet were frosted and pained him so much that he cried like a baby....We were on the road 82 hours continuous time."

Then I think...nope!, I like learning about life back then from afar!  I'll pass on the frozen toes and long work hours!  

One thing I love about the story of Christmas is that God didn't just look at human life from afar, observing the joys and painful aspects like me looking at my train books.  Instead He incarnated Himself inside human life, even in the most humiliating start as a weak, helpless baby.  

I like how the New Testament book of Hebrews puts it: 

Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death. By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.

It’s obvious, of course, that he didn’t go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham. That’s why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people’s sins, he would have already experienced it all himself—all the pain, all the testing—and would be able to help where help was needed. (Hebrews 2:14-18)

Merry Christmas.

-Kurt

Sources:

Memories of St. Elmo by Charlotte Merrifield with Suzy Kelly

Historic Alpine Tunnel by Dow Helmers