Uniform.

This past Saturday, with the temperature reaching all the way up to three degrees, a number of CAP members headed out to the Veteran’s Cemetery to remove the wreaths placed there in December. I imagine in the Southern latitudes, this is an easier task. As it was, due to heavy snow and a strange thaw-re-freeze cycle, much of the headstones were partially or completely under a hard, crusted snow.

Walking was difficult; once in a while the snow would hold me, but most of the time it was a scene of high-stepping through snow up to and past my knees. I had several grumpy thoughts in my head in which I wished my weight would make up its mind — either be too much or too little for the snow, and none of this in-between stuff which would leave one leg on the top and one buried.

We fanned out, and I soon found myself down on my knees, punching through the snow and trying to locate the wreaths, digging with my hands and pulling as hard as I could to free them from the solidly frozen snow. I felt a bit like a gopher. One at a time, we would have to do this to every single gravestone to make sure we’d removed the wreaths we were responsible for. After removing a wreath, I tried to pause a moment and look at the name on the stone; we didn’t want to be disrespectful out there. Eventually, I was given access to a spade, and others who had metal hooks which made it a bit easier to pull the wreaths out would follow me as I dug through the snow. Still, it was a cold and exhausting procedure and I felt very out of shape. I also felt a little strange using a spade in a cemetery, even if it was just for digging holes in the snow.

At one point, as we were all struggling to push our way through the snow, a single-engine plane flew overhead. One of the men paused, looked up, and then looked back at the supposed air-bound volunteer group as we staggered and wobbled through the snow. “What’s wrong with this picture?” he muttered under his breath, before turning back to the job at hand.

I snickered, and went back to work.

“Shouldn’t that aviation club be out here helping?” one lady asked, a bit later. There were some non-CAP people out there helping us remove the wreaths, too.

I was too busy trying to stave off a heart attack to answer, though I heard a fellow CAP member politely respond. “That’s who we are.”

“Oh. Well. You should have your uniforms on so we would know that.”

My uniform consists of gray slacks and a short-sleeved dark blue polo shirt. Even if I had chosen to wear it in this cold weather and snow, it would have been unseen beneath my snow pants, heavy coat, scarf, and hat. If the casual observer was going by uniform as far as denoting who was participating, they might have come away thinking that Carhartt was the sponsor of the event.

I found myself, somewhere around hour 2.5, ready to call it quits. Quits on existing, frankly. I was whipped, both cold and sweating, and completely out of breath. My hair was a tangled mess beneath my hood, spilling across my face and freezing in a lattice-work that blocked my vision. At one point, I tripped in the snow and fell face-first into the ground. I lay there, thinking that maybe I would stay in such a position and take a little nap. Concerned that people would think I was having problems and begin inquiring if I was OK, I figured I’d better get up. I splayed my arms about and struggled to my feet. I later heard a man say to another that this was an “interesting” group; he’d seen one woman making some kind of snow angel, but doing it face down of all things.

Darn. I had hoped no one had seen me.

Nearly three hours later, with the help of everyone involved and aching muscles I hadn’t previously been aware of, we had all the wreaths removed from the cemetery and we all went our separate ways. I walked in the door of my apartment, changed out of my drenched-with-sweat clothes, and fell onto my bed to not wake again until many hours later.

It was quite a day. I was glad to be part of the Carhartt aviation club.