Winter 2019 | 13 parents bought us each our own sled. I still remember how excited I was to take the snowmobile safety course and be able to operate my snowmobile, a 1989 Ski-doo Safari Saga 377, all by myself on the trails! It was around that time when we became a four- snowmobile family. My parents realized the only place we wanted to go snowmobiling was Vermont. We eventually found a piece of land in the Goose Green section of Corinth, Vt. in Orange county and built a small log cabin. One of the prerequisites was that our land and future cabin had to be near snowmobile trails. We first stayed in our log cabin that we mostly built by ourselves in December of 1996. It was around this time that my parents and I got involved with our local snowmobile club, the Corinth Sno-Scramblers. We would go up to Vermont for work weekends in the fall and help to clear trails and build bridges under the guidance of Craig Trischman and Greg Slack. We also started going on rides with Craig and his family and friends. We had many “weenie” roasts out on the trails and learned from Craig where the best trails as well as the most remote trails were. Craig always seemed to like to bring us on the most challenging secondary trails our area had to offer, many times having to break trail in two-foot deep snow. If that doesn’t teach a 12-year-old girl how to really handle a sled, I don’t know what would. That club involvement has also resulted in my mom, Karin, currently being the membership chair, myself as the club webmaster, and my dad as one of the core group of guys that works on our groomer and trails. At 19, my brother didn’t want to ride anymore. But I have continued, only missing one season of riding since 1987. My mom always jokes that I am the most hardcore rider of our family at this point. I even met my husband through snowmobiling back in 2010. Snowmobiling is such a big part of our family that in 2015, my brother, even though he no longer rides, tracked down and bought back the actual Kitty Cat that we rode as kids. He fixed it up and gave it to me when I was pregnant. While I was pregnant, I rode upwards of 3,500 miles that winter, all while carrying very precious cargo. My last ride that winter was a memorial ride for a good friend, Keith Whitney, who had passed the week before in a snowmobiling accident, when I was just about six months pregnant. Since Kelsie was born in July of 2015, she has enjoyed snowmobiling for four winters. Three of those winters, including this year, she has actually ridden with us on the VAST trails. Her love for what started off as “a-biles”, and now called “snowbiles,” has grown without any pressure from me or my husband. As soon as she sees snow, she gets excited and asks to take out her snowmobile. She constantly asks for, “bigger snow.” She already has an arsenal of two snowmobiles including the 1984 Kitty Cat and a 2018 Arctic Cat ZR 200. Although they are the wrong brand of snowmobiles for our family, they help to fuel her love for snowmobiling. Some people wonder why snowmobiling means so much to us as a family. Trying to explain to someone who has not enjoyed the sport as a family is sometimes comparable to trying to understand a foreign language. Snowmobiling comes with its very own community and a sense of family. When I was younger, snowmobiling with my parents taught me responsibility at a young age of 11 and the “rules of the road,” although I think sometimes I made them cringe more than anything. The tradition of snowmobiling as a family in Vermont is what makes winter, winter to me. At this point in my life, I have over 30 years worth of very vivid snowmobiling memories with my parents, four winters including my daughter, and many more on the horizon. While there is nothing I can do to guarantee that Kelsie will always love riding snowmobiles on the VAST trails, I hope to someday hit the trails as a group of lady snowmobilers with Kelsie and her child, much like my mom, myself, and Kelsie have enjoyed riding together these past couple of years. It isn’t often you see three generations of a family snowmobiling together, and I think having three generations of lady snowmobilers is even more exceptional! 3 Generations Kim Davis, rides in front of her mom, Karin Thody, in January of 1987.