A foggy night on Canyon Creek Pass

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Miracles happen — I think:

There were only three of us sitting on the visitor-side bleachers: Chet Bowser, me and our principal, Jim Backen. None of our students or the players' families had made the trip. Why would they? The game was 160 miles from home. The weather forecast was dire. It was Christmas vacation.

Jim and Chet were two of the most devoted teachers I've ever known. They defied Oregon's infamous mountain blizzards, fog and ubiquitous black ice to support "their boys" wherever they played. This would turn out to be one of those nights.

As if that weren't enough, these were real-deal tough guys, the kind I had longed to be since leaving my cozy Minnesota confines for the Pacific Northwest. They hunted for venison, fished in thigh-high rivers, smoked cigars, built things and cussed like the military veterans they were.

The day before, Jim had informed (not invited) me that I'd be joining him and Chet at the Mazama High game way over in Klamath Falls. I interpreted this as an offer to join their exclusive tough-guy club — me, the newbie wannabe from "back East" as they preferred to call it.

After our school's Christmas pageant, the three of us headed to Klamath Falls. All along the way, we were enveloped by a winter wonderland of snowy foothills and peaks and every shade of evergreen glowing in the waning sunshine. Each new view along the winding way up and way down roads would ignite anyone's wanderlust, especially mine, a kid from the flatlands.

I could hardly believe how circumstances had transported me to this new world.

I sat by myself in the back seat. For 120 miles I listened to Jim and Chet lecture each other in workman detail about building second stories, backyard gazebos and blacktopping their driveways.

It took another 35 miles for Jim to describe the time he accidentally hit a deer on Siskiyou Road, knocked it out, resuscitated "the little guy" with "mouth to snout" resuscitation until it spang up, bounded to the edge of the forest, stared back at Jim for a moment "like it knew I saved its life," then disappeared into the forest "to find its mama."

After that, they joked tough-guy-like about that time they'd nearly killed themselves driving over Deadman Pass on the way to the La Grande High game. They used terms I'd never heard of, like "double hairpin turn" and "frozen fog," laced, of course, with expletives. All I knew was driving on straight, flat, sanded and salted Minnesota roads and the annoyance of tailing a mammoth street plow.

After the game we walked out of the gym and into the damp, chilling night. Jim tossed me his car keys. "Your turn. Take us home."

How could I say no?

Right on cue, the infamous Oregon fog enveloped us. If you've ever driven in it you know what happens: Headlight beams disappear into oblivion. Sense of direction is discombobulated. Tires hydroplane on the black-iced roads, especially on curves you don't see coming. It's all dreadful.

But not to Chet and Jim, of course. They fell right asleep.

Even now I want to ask my then 24-year-old self why common sense didn't prevail; why I didn't just pull over, awaken them and admit defeat. What would have been the harm?

"How can someone so smart be so dumb?" Dad used to say to me.

I was raised to pray but never gave it much credence. I suppose up to then vanity and hubris were why. But in this awful darkness, I was lost, hopeless and in despair. Desperately I asked God out loud for a miracle to get us home.

About then I saw ever-so-faint reddish lights far ahead of me in the muck. They would appear, disappear, appear, disappear as I crept around hairpins, climbed then descended Sexton Mountain Pass, the Smith Hill Summit and Canyon Creek Pass, the same ones that earlier that day made me gasp with awe but now seemed a deathtrap.

I remember blaming everything and everyone, including myself, for my hellish predicament, especially now when I should have been celebrating the Christmas holiday with new friends in front of a warm and welcoming fire at the local pub.

Somehow, a lifetime later it seemed, I navigated Jim's Chevy into the valley where we lived. The highway flattened and straightened. Through the fog appeared dim but never-so-lovely Christmas lights strung along the ranch and farm homes and fences.

And then this happened: As I exited the highway, those taillights flickered rhythmically several times just before they disappeared into the fog one last time.

A few days later, after a lovely Christmas Eve dinner with Jim and his family, I asked him:

"Do you believe in miracles?"

Jim said, "No. Do you?"

I told Jim about the lights that guided us home. "We were lucky is all," he said.

Sometimes "luck" doesn't seem to cut it. This was one of those times. I'm still not quite there yet, but after a lifetime of thinking about that night 49 Christmastimes ago, "miracle" comes closer. I know. I was there.

Dick Schwartz lives in Minneapolis.