High Mountain Musing

yesterday, along the road home, the snow is only beginning...

The snow has arrived!  Can you feel the bursting excitement?

Yesterday it began, slowly at first, soft and light, settling and easing us into the world of white. It gave us warning and did not catch us unprepared as it has some years, sneaking in after dark, under the radar of the weatherman’s predictions. We had been skeptical this time too, doubting this well anticipated blessing, disappointed time and again by the empty promise of storms passing us by.

Forrest reminds me, “Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.”  The snows that cover our world are both.

This one did not pass us by.  It came.  It is still here.  When it is light enough to see, I will be out with my camera.  We will get little else done today but play in the newness our snowy world. 

Mid afternoon, the snow is still light, there is still doubt, but we decided to play it safe and get the pickup out before it is too late.  Too late means getting snowed in, which in turn means either leaving the vehicle there until the road is pushed open by the first snowplow of the year, around the end of April next spring; or wrestle with chains and shovels and perhaps even a front end loader like we had to do one year when our skepticism tried to outwit the weather.

Bob and I drive out in two separate trucks.  Vision is limited in the heavy veil of snow.  I keep my eye on his tracks and try to follow.  I stop often to look, to take pictures, to stare in amazement at this incredible phenomenon and the intense beauty as if it were my very first time seeing it all.  Ah, but it is the first time I have seen it like this… 

I watch as the golden eagle flies above and before Bob’s slowly moving truck, guiding us through the storm.  We are a convoy, the three of us, the eagle leading the way, Bob’s truck crunching through the untouched powder, my old red Blazer following close behind.  The eagle turns off and up the steep cliffs. We continue onward.

We leave the pickup at the end of the section of road that is often kept plowed, and drive  home in the old red Blazer, 6 ½ miles back to our cabin, along the road above the reservoir as the snow seems to come down thicker with every mile.

We stop to watch a family of Big Horn Sheep stop to watch us.  They climb the steep cliffs above us effortlessly. Now they would rather be still and observer the odd phenomenon of a passing vehicle.  How hidden they are in the cliffs and falling snow.  I take pictures, and later show Forrest, “See this dot? That is a lamb…”

Above the flats at the delta of the reservoir, a coyote too stops to watch us.  His coat is thick and beautiful.  There are no hunters here now, and he seem to knows it.  He stands proud and easy, somehow understanding he is safe with us.  Although he is beautiful to see, I wish he would run.  There are few coyotes who winter up here with us.  Fewer still if  hunters come for the sport, still claiming that they are controlling a nuisance.  Up here, I wonder, a nuisance to whom?  A foolish claim to continue the sport. There is no one here besides us for miles and miles and miles. 

The road will be closed now.  This is the last of simple trips, enclosed in a warm vehicle, straight from the front door of our cabin to wherever we need to go. As we drive home, I watch patches of bunch grass still poking through the hillsides.  Golden rays fanning above the thin snow. They will be gone this morning, buried under this all encompassing world of white.

Solitude descends with the heavy mantle of snow.  There is a silence, a peace, a comfort I can not describe. It is mine, it is ours, it is different from anything else I have ever experienced before living here.  Snow.  It becomes a part of us, our world, everything we do, everything we see, a besieging blanket of white.

A red tail hawk takes flight out across the reservoir in the middle of the storm.