Cold Weather, Skiing and Birthdays

It’s still cold here. Yesterday morning it was -16 degrees F; it was about half of that in town. Today, it was -11 F, but there was wind, making it bitterly cold. This evening, I’m enjoying listening to the crackling of a fire and glad I’m inside where it’s warm. The first photo is a trail that is often skiied and walked, that's just outside of town. This afternoon, I started out on this trail (later on the trail runs across a dam that I write about). The second photo shows the row of large maples, flanked on one side by a dirt road and on the other by a rusty and broken wire fence.

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I enjoy being outdoors when the sun is low and the shadows are long. Today, my birthday, I went out for a late afternoon cross-country ski. It was cold and windy, but felt down right balmy after our morning low of -11 and the good thing about skiing in the woods is that much of the wind is blocked. Hearing the wind overhead, where it swayed the tops of the trees, reminds me that I am in the elements and am not completely in control. I ski across the dam of a lake, long frozen. To the north, a creek appears at the base of the dam, a small trickle of water flows mostly under a sheet of ice. Crossing the dam, I head south and climb the hill and pass through a pine forest that is need of thinning. Bob planted these years ago; he’s no longer with us but his wife allows me to ski through their property. Coming around the lake, I take the old farm road that crawls up and down hills, along side of large maples and a broken down fence. Nobody has been back here since the last snow and I break trail, my skis sinking into the deep snow. It’s good that I’m wearing gaiters to keep the snow out of my boots as I plow through the powder and set the trail. I pause occasionally to take it all in. The giant limbs of the maples are blanketed with snow. The pasture to my east, where Bob kept horses and a generation earlier had cows is now slowly maturing into hardwoods, with trees eight and ten inches thick. I ski around one a maple that has fallen and blocks the road. It’s been decades if not a half-century or more since these trees have been tapped for their sweet nectar. I ski till the sun dropped behind the horizon and its rays are no longer striking the top of the trees, then I turn around and head back, making better time as I’m flowing my own broken trail. With the disappearance of the sun, the temperature drops and I’m glad to get back to my truck.

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I got a surprise delivery today, a new ski hat for my birthday (and I do believe it's Carolina blue!). If these photos look a little skewed, it’s because I held the camera myself and the lens was a little wide for such close-up photography. Also, Murf has honored me for my birthday, digging into her archives and coming up with some of her more creative inventions.