On the Thursday before Groundhog Day, while at lunch with my friends, I hatched a brilliant plan. This is a common occurrence for me. But this plan out brilliant-ed all of my previous brilliant plans because it involved me, a college kid, going on my first ever road trip in my own car, The Duchess, with my own boyfriend, my own little sister and my own friends. We were going to see Punxsutawney Phil, a meteorologist-groundhog worshipped by people, emerge from a burrow and predict the weather for the next six weeks.
The thing about being someone that makes brilliant plans all the time, is that when those plans don’t go the exact way you imagined they would — they never do — you want to die. And the fact is, after I’d driven through the night to Punxsutawney, gotten on a school bus at a Walmart at 2:30 a.m., accidentally arrived at Gobbler’s Knob four hours early with nothing more than one seventh of a meat stick and one bite of a long-form breakfast sandwich (sausage in a hot dog bun with egg and cheese) in my tummy, lost feeling in my toes and then walked two miles on frozen foot back to said Walmart, I did die. Rest in peace, me. But I’ve come back to life to share my story.
It has been a longtime goal of mine to live in a Bill Murray film, and since I am afraid of ghosts, not so great at golf and dabble in feel-good journalism, I thought that this was my best shot. I ended up only living through this day once, however, which was probably a good thing because about 67% of it was Hell on Earth. The other 33%, I am chalking up to valuable research, as I am currently taking an ethnography class, in which we are encouraged to fully immerse ourselves in potentially uncomfortable situations in order to understand people unlike ourselves in a detailed and complex way.
And so, like any good student would, I collected some field notes:
First I should describe one of the first people I met on my journey to see Phil: the drunken middle-aged woman whom I first noticed when she fell in the middle of the Walmart parking lot and then immediately started cackling, taking a swig of whatever mysterious juice she was drinking from an unmarked bottle. She was layered up and ready for action. We never caught her name, but she did end up forcing us to sing “The Wheels On The Bus” with her until we reached Gobbler’s Knob two miles down the road. I hoped she wouldn’t be embarrassed about her fall and almost everything else she did. She was loud, she was boisterous and to the lay-person her actions probably would’ve been jarring in the wee hours of the morning. But lay-people don’t go out and do things like this. They lay. It’s literally in their name. Besides, she kept telling us that this trip was on her bucket list and I was proud of her for crossing it off. Who knows? Maybe her Groundhog Day was but a small piece of a much larger journey, about which we will find out more in a biopic about her life in 20 years or so.
Drunk Lady wasn’t the only endearingly deranged encounter of the morning. The next friend I met was a police officer given the task of making sure no one burned to death around an otherwise unsupervised bonfire that continued to gain a crowd as more and more people showed up to Gobbler’s Knob. There was no fence or barrier around the fire. People could literally stand in the wood that waited to be burned. As more of a crowd accumulated, people began to push and shove, and for people like me, who assume that tragedy will follow us anywhere, it began to feel as though this fire was a horrible accident wanting to happen. The police officer seemed to be on my wavelength and gruffly called out, “Everyone, please! Phil wouldn’t want you to behave like this! Take 10 minutes maximum near the fire and then let someone else have a turn. Phil is a nice guy and would want you to be nice too! We are all friends of Phil’s here.” At first, I found this cute. Then just insane. But the newborn ethnographer in me knows not to judge, and instead just to note. And so I noted, and I tried to make sense. This event was about Phil. We were all here for Phil. So when things got borderline dangerous, and stampede-y, why couldn’t we look to Phil for guidance on the correct way to act? In this case, the correct way to act was to not let thy neighbor freeze to death, yet not push thy neighbor into a pile of flames. Phil was helping us walk that line.
Referring to Phil for all reason and hope seemed to make more and more sense to me throughout the night. Between the hours of 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., people got quieter and fell into what I think was a bout of despair. Whatever special juice they had smuggled in was no doubt depleted, and the fun and frivolity of a large plot of land with one fire and three tents, none of which were selling large soft pretzels, had fizzled out. Surprising, I know.
I was at the hopelessly depressing part of my Bill Murray movie. I had lost feeling in my toes completely. I was fighting a mental war over whether to stay or leave the fire and give someone else a spot, and I will admit that the decider of this war was a small rodent named Phil. Shit was hitting the fan and the fan was freezing the shit.
To fill the cursed silence, I would periodically remind the people I was with that this was Phil’s first prognostication as a dad. It was either that or try to convince myself that I was waiting to see the Lorax and not a groundhog. This got annoying I’m sure, but it kept my mind busy for all of 27 seconds at a time. I wondered if Phil’s new children, Sunny and Shadow, and his wife Phyllis were aware that 40,000 people emerged from their own burrows to stand in the cold for over four hours and see their own father and husband chatter into a bearded man’s ear just to find out when they should put away their galoshes. Regardless of whether or not Phil’s family knows it, people love that groundhog.
When the sun finally rose, and I lost all my toes, the men in top hats finally decided that it was time to Simba the poor guy and ask him if he saw his shadow. It was then that I met my favorite Phil-disciple of this entire trip. He was a shorter man, definitely an outdoorsy type, as he seemed to have the best hiking tights, Patagonia vest and a large sturdily fashioned backpack, the best that money could buy. Because of the way his gloved hands excitedly clutched the straps of his backpack under his armpits, I call him Backpack Dad. Or, maybe just Backpack, because while his children were present at Phil’s reveal, Backpack had relinquished his duties of fatherhood to fully immerse himself in Phil’s glory. I heard a boy who I assume used to be Backpack’s son say, “Dad, I’m so cold. I want to go home.” Before I could silently commiserate with the child, Backpack whipped around, stooped to the young boy’s level and softly, yet terrifyingly said, “I hope you learned an important lesson today. I told you to wear boots and you wore those sneakers. Now your feet are cold, but we’re here to see Phil, so you’ll have to suck it up. Learn something. It’s time for Phil.” The boy sniffled, and Backpack spun back around, his eyes focused on the stump. Honestly, I don’t blame Backpack. The journey is treacherous and to find no reward at the end all because of poor footwear choices would be maddening. At this point, Phil was the priority. I would never let my spawn hold me back.
Moments later, Backpack, along with a crowd of over 40,000 began to cheer, “Phil! Phil! Phil!” Becoming more and more excited with each chant of Phil’s name, Backpack began to hop and then jump, reaching what I’m sure was a three-foot vertical, still clutching the straps of his backpack, a deranged smile encompassing his face. I was happy for the guy, who with each jump, began to resemble what I imagine Clark Griswold would look like if they made a “Groundhog Vacation” movie. I hope one day to feel Backpack-level happiness. Or Backpack-level insanity, whichever comes first.
Instead, I must admit, I was none too compelled by this groundhog, especially after I heard that he saw his shadow, and that I would be in for six more weeks of winter. I was honestly too captivated by Backpack’s performance to notice that from my vantage point, Phil’s reveal was blocked by a large tree, and the rest of Phil’s disciples had already snatched up the other available real estate. But I didn’t care. Because Phil’s appearance meant that this journey was finally over.
Once they put Phil back inside of his burrow, I saw a stampede turn toward me, standing at the back of the crowd, and start running at me in a mass exodus of Gobbler’s Knob. It was as if the splendor of Phil had finally worn off and all of his disciples once again became aware of the blistering cold. My friends and I decided that instead of waiting for the bus, we would keep ourselves busy by walking two miles back to the Walmart. I hoped that the walk would force the blood back into my toes, but I wasn’t so lucky. It wasn’t until two hours later, after we’d made it to the car and drove ourselves to a small diner in Clarion, that I was able to take stock of what I had just experienced while stuffing my face with a breakfast sandwich, this time, in bagel form. Even though what started as a brilliant idea had caused me extreme pain and early onset frostbite, I realized something: This is what younger me was thinking about when she thought of the good times she would have with her college friends. These are the trips I had only hoped I could execute with a 48-hour-notice and a 2008 Pontiac Vibe. This was the first road trip I had taken without a parent, the first decision I had made on my own, and so, minus a few time-management oversights and a few lost toes, I’m proud of Groundhog Day 2025.
In terms of my ethnography report, my journalistic findings, and my life lessons learned, here are my takeaways:
If you never (or barely) saw a rodent in the arms of a man in a top hat, does it really matter if said rodent saw his shadow? And if a girl can’t feel her toes, does it really matter if there are six more weeks of winter, or if daffodils start sprouting by sunrise? No, maybe not. I certainly did not think so. But now, almost two weeks after my perilous journey, even though my toes are still frozen, my heart has shed a layer of ice under the warmth of the realization that we need more things like Groundhog Day. We need more drives through the night with new friends. We need more long-form breakfast sandwiches. We don’t need more human soup roasting over an open flame, but we could use more time spent holding our loved ones close. We need to make more memories. Because all of these things do matter. Just as long as they take place indoors and begin after 9 a.m.
Do more things that matter. Phil would want you to.
