And Then It Snowed

     It snowed. And then it snowed and snowed and snowed. When it stopped, the earth was white with two feet of snow and the tree limbs bowed low with heavy snow burdens. Then it snowed again, another six inches or more. 

The first snowfall, before it got deep

    I was ecstatic.

    The electricity went out—no internet, no cell service, no email, no cookstove. The outdoor shower had frozen, but the water was still running, so I could shower indoors, in my beautiful bathroom.

I filled the bathtub with water in case the holding tank emptied. The landline phone had gone dead earlier but was working now. The house would stay warm with my wood-burning stove. I had already driven my car the quarter-mile downhill distance to the paved road. I was comfortably snowed in.

   I knew, from experience, that the snowplow would have just about buried the car, which was parked by the side of the road, so I was anxious to dig it out while the snow was still soft, before it froze. So, on the first day of the two-foot snow, I decided that that would be the day's task.

    First, though, I should make sure the snow was skiable. 

    I put my skis on at the back door, then skied down my driveway. My skis sank deep into the soft snow with each step. I didn't want to stop. I skied through the woods to an old logging road, then on up the mountain. It was tough going, breaking trail through such deep snow. I struggled up the mountain till the road flattened, and then I still didn't want to stop. I kept on going, up and up, till finally I came to my senses. The day's task was to dig the car out. I ought to go home.

    Even downhill, even in my tracks, I had to push through snow, so it was still slow going. By the time I got home, I had been gone three hours. I ate a hurried lunch, grabbed the car keys, and tied a shovel to my pack, fastening it securely. Then I put on my skis and started down the road, with the shovel sticking two feet above my head.

    I was skiing downhill on fairly steep hills, but the deep snow kept me from going too fast. When I saw a small tree ahead of me, bowed down over the road by the snow, I stopped for assessment. I could ski around it on the far side, or it looked like I could ski under it, too, maybe without even ducking my head. I decided to ski under it.

    I forgot about the shovel.

    Thunk! The shovel hit the tree trunk, and down I went, as in a slapstick comedy.

    I struggled to standing, with my pack and its shovel still on my back, picked up my hat, dusted off the snow, then skied on down the hill to the road, where, as suspected, my car was snowed in. 

    Just as I started to dig out the car, a big pick-up drove past, going down the mountain. The driver stopped to tell me he would give me a hand when he came back up the road, after picking up his stepson. 

    Then the snowplow came up the road. Seeing what I was doing, the driver swung the plow as close as he could to my car and pulled away about half of what I would have to dig. I waved a cheerful thank-you. A few minutes later he came back and swiped a whole patch of snow away from the front of the car. Way helpful!

    Next the postman came by. He stopped and opened the back door of his car, saying, "I've got a package for you." He handed me my package and drove on up the road.

    That was all I saw of other people for a couple of hours. I dug and dug and dug at the snow, carrying it by the shovelful to dump in the woods. I pulled snow away from the tires. I pulled it away from the side of the car. I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled, and just as I was almost done, the man in the pickup drove by again. His stepson jumped out, grabbed the shovel, and finished the job for me. By this time I was glad enough to stand around and chat with him while he worked. His name was Brennan. He had moved here from Los Angeles last July, with his wife and child. They live in a small house just across the road. 

    "If you ever need help," he said as he handed the shovel back to me, the job done, "just knock on my door."

    I left the shovel in the car, put my pack, with my package in it, on my back, and skied up the hill, ducking easily under the tree, thinking how fortunate I am to have such kind neighbors. 

    I cannot tell you how tired I was when I got home. Physically beat. Unable to take a long hot bath, I had the last of the eggnog and brandy instead. I heated dinner on top of the wood-burning stove, then ate by candlelight. Later, as I was walking up the stairs to the bedroom, carrying a flickering candle in its brass candlestick holder like a character out of Dickens, I thought what a good day it had been.

Skiing the Layton Ditch trail from my house the next day

    

    

'Twas the Night (or Two) before Christmas

     I have been cooking all morning, making a Moroccan style beef short rib tagine, lemon spinach couscous salad, and orange-chocolate pot de creme. That, along with the pear-fennel soup I made last night, was the menu for Christmas dinner.

    I was also going to make a chocolate angel food cake to take to the dinner I was invited to for Christmas Eve, following the family hike I was also invited to join.

    My son and his father and stepmother were going to be here on Christmas Day to share the dinner with me, so a few days ago, when the snow had almost but not quite melted, I went out with my bow saw to look for a Christmas tree. The one I found looked pretty scrawny when I got it home, about eight feet tall but delicately limbed, to say the least. There were so few branches I thought I wouldn't be able to get all my ornaments on it. Now, however, fully decorated, it must surely be one of the best Christmas trees ever. (My mother, every Christmas: "It's the best tree ever!")

It is slender, so it doesn't take up a lot of room. I don't knock ornaments and tinsel off branches when I go to the bathroom, and I don't have branches dangling over my shoulder when I sit on the couch. It looks lusciously decorated, with all my ornaments—yes, I used them all—draped from every possible branch.

    And then, after all that, after the cooking and the decorating and the buying of spirits and gifts, no one will be here to celebrate with me. I will not make the chocolate angel food cake because I won't be joining the other family on Christmas Eve. It's all because it'll be a white Christmas for me in my little house on the mountain.

    Snow is predicted, at this altitude, practically non-stop, starting at 5:00 this afternoon (Thursday). All plans have crumbled. Ela is not coming down from Vashon. Dan and Tracy wouldn't be able to get up my road so won't be here, either. The Christmas Eve plans with friends have been canceled.

    Instead, I will drink eggnog with Kahlua in front of a cheerful fire in the stove. I will eat my good dinner and open my gifts. I will do Zoom calls with my family. And, if predictions hold true, I will watch snow fall, hour after hour, all day long. I will watch the snow fall for days. I will watch it pile up in great heaps of white loveliness. I will take the car the half-mile down the road to the paved road, which stays plowed, then will walk back up the road in the snow. Maybe, as it keeps snowing, I will be able to put on my skis and ski up the mountain. I will miss the planned and eagerly anticipated celebration, but there are worse things than being snowbound for Christmas.

It Was the Bear's Fault

     "This is the bear's fault," I thought as I drove home Monday night, after dark and through snow.

    I had left home in a light and intermittent snowfall in plenty of time to have snow tires put on my car and then to do a few quick errands before heading home. I should have been home well before dark. But when I got back in the car after the final errand and saw that the "low tire" signal had come on, I headed right back to Les Schwab.

    The receptionist thought it was just a matter of turning the light off and called someone right away. The store was busy. It was a long wait. Finally a technician came in, squatted in front of my chair, and said, sympathetically, "One of your tires has a slash in it. We would think it had been done with a knife except that it's on the inside of the tire."

    "Ah," I thought. "The bear."

    Last spring I left my snow tires on the inside of the car port (roof but no sides), leaning against one of the posts. One day last summer I was puzzled to find one of those tires outside the car port, leaning against the same pole. The other three tires were still propped against the pole on the inside of the car port. There was no shredded plastic. Very mysterious.

    The only thing I could figure was that a bear had moved it, though I couldn't understand why he would do that. Now, faced with more substantial evidence, I envisioned the scene again. Curious about the bright yellow something that was my tire inside the plastic bag, he must have picked it up, slashing the tire with a claw as he lifted it to his nose. Then, deciding it wasn't edible, he pivoted and dropped it. It happened to land upright, leaning against the pole. The last piece of evidence was a slight rip in the plastic I had noticed when I put the tire in the car. Just a small hole. Just big enough for a claw.

    I had to buy two new tires, of course, because these days, if you ruin one tire you have to buy its mate, too. 

    I made it home through the dark and the snow, stopping halfway up the hill to clear the road of branches dragged down by the snow, using the headlights for light, but I was still grumbling at the bear. We get along pretty well, in general, but this time I think he owes me about $300 for the tires.

    

Migrating Birds in Autumn

Like wind made visible
a small dark cloud swirls above trees
swoops and swings like a kite
then suddenly splinters like pixels on a computer screen
uncoalescing.
A wave that on the screen dissolves an image
into thousands of unrecognizable bits
here splinters it into recognizability 
of birds. 

The dots have lost cohesion.

Each flies aimlessly, confusedly.

Suddenly the flock implodes again

into a dense black swooshing host

a calligrapher's flourish

a skier's rhythm on downhill turns

a melody's graceful loops, molto vivace.

Suddenly the unity explodes again.

All the birds become each bird

finding a perch in an autumn tree.

I thought the show had ended then

and was ready to go on my way

when a gust of wind flushed

a silhouette of birds into a skyward flutter

and a flutter of leaves earthward wending:

mirror images twinkling in the morning light

sprinkling the air with beauty

before it was empty again.

Amtrak Changes the Route

     I am so mad at Amtrak!

    For many years I have taken the train between Eugene, Oregon, and Tacoma, Washington, where I get on a ferry for Vashon Island to visit my son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. I loved that ride, which crossed grand rivers and traveled through marshlands and woodlands after it left Portland, and then—the best part—traveled along the Puget Sound, with islands offshore, ferries chugging through the water, and, when the weather was fine, a view of snow-topped Olympic Mountains across the sea. When the train passed boathouses and houseboats, I imagined what living on water would be like. When it went past waterfront parks, I watched people walking along the shore and children playing on swings, water birds stalking along beaches, water softly lapping not far from the train tracks. Then the beautiful, long, graceful Narrows Bridge arched into view, with its double span, one green, one gray. After that, vision shut down in the dark tunnel just before the train arrived at the Tacoma station.

    I always made sure to sit on the left side of the train, the water side. I loved that journey.

    Once on the way back from Tacoma, after the train had left the Puget Sound and was traveling through marshes and woods, one of the conductors came on the intercom to apologize for our having stopped to let a freight train pass. Then he started reminiscing. He had wanted to work for Amtrak ever since he was a kid, he said, and watched the train go past. He had been on this train for forty years. He had seen cougars and bears and foxes in these woods. Eagles. Egrets. Ever since then, I have looked and looked for that quick glimpse of an animal from the train window, but I have never been so lucky.

    And then—dumb Amtrak! Stupid, unfeeling, efficiency-blinded Amtrak changed the route! The train no longer goes along the sound. There is no more expanse of water to gaze at, snow-peaked mountains to contemplate, lapping waves to meditate on, leisurely walkers to watch in the waterfront parks. The route is all inland now. Instead of seas and rivers and parks, it passes industrial ugliness, trashy yards, urban clutter. 

    I am devastated.

    Amtrak has turned a spiritually uplifting experience into mere transportation. Just get there. Never mind the loss.

    I would forgive Amtrak, I think, if the new route were made for environmental reasons—to preserve the habitat for those animals the conductor had seen. Or for social justice reasons or safety reasons. But the point was speed. The reasons were economics and efficiency. 

    Bad, bad choice! 

    Who cares if it's a faster route? Who cares if we no longer have to wait for a freight train to pass? How did Amtrak weigh efficiency and speed against beauty and solace? How do they measure satisfaction from some passengers against a great sense of loss from others? Did they ask us? How did they know we would be glad to make the sacrifice of scenery for speed? 

    We so much need to slow down and immerse ourselves in beauty. Amtrak gave us that opportunity. Now they, too, have succumbed to get there-get there-get there. 

    I am sorry for the people who made this decision. They have no soul. And I am sorry for those of us who have lost a beautiful ride in this beautiful country that not enough of us see enough of, anyway.