When I was young I had a close group of friends.

We were an eclectic group of guys who first met early on in high school.

Our group consisted of dungeons and dragons, nerds, jocks, martial artists, rich kids,

poor kids, and some with trouble backgrounds.

Despite our many differences we managed to bond and remain close, partially because we

understood the others personal traumas, but also because we shared some pretty strange

experiences together.

A favorite pastime was to get together late at night, play a game that we called Tesso,

Tactical Environmental Scouting Operations.

That teenage boy wanted to admit to playing hide-and-seek.

We would play Tesso in graveyards or parks, but we weren't above playing it through a

random neighborhood either.

Vermont in the 1980s was a good place to grow up.

We felt safe there, and wherever we went we were kings of our domain.

As far as we were concerned we owned the whole state and it was our personal playground.

A couple of us had driver's license so it was nothing for us to leave our city and

drive 30 minutes into the country to find the perfect woods for our nighttime operations.

One thing about Vermont is there is always plenty of snow.

One cold winter night we headed out to a spot on the lake near Shelburn.

Apparently, we thought it would be fun to up the coal factor by adding the freezing

winds off the lake to make our game more challenging.

We drove down the road leading to the beach under a bright moon and we parked.

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