In the White Mountains of New Hampshire—Part II: Skiing, Snowshoeing, and Snowstorms

    The skiing was great—not always easy, but that was part of the fun. Skiing through the woods was lovely on the easy ups and downs and where the sun threw long shadows of thin-trunked trees onto the snow—so different from the big trees of the Pacific Northwest! 

                                                        photo by Jeanne Blauner

The trails were often packed hard by previous snowshoers and skiers into narrow passages through deep snow on either side.

                                        photo by Tomas Dundzilla
Snowshoers on the narrow trail
Front to back: Sandra, Lisa, Jeanne 

At places the trail went steeply down and then suddenly up, making V-gullies that were sometimes difficult and sometimes impossible to ski: too narrow to herringbone, too steep to stomp up, with snow so deep on the sides there was no push from ski poles. I managed the less steep ones, but pretty soon so many of the skiers were falling so often that the best thing to do was take off our skis and walk. Then we would put the skis back on for more of the lovely bits before we had to take them off again.

    The second day's ski had a lot of V-gullies and one long, wind-swept traverse on a steep hillside, a delightful crossing. 

Me on the traverse             photo by Tomas Dundzila

    At one point, on the return to the trailhead, I took off my skis to walk up a hill and then couldn't get one boot to click back into the binding. The mechanism seemed broken. The snowshoers were way ahead of the three skiers—Jeanne, Lisa, and me. Neither Jeanne nor Lisa could make the binding work. I would have to walk, carrying my skis, the last mile and a half. Carrying skis is awkward, but walking the hard-packed trail wasn't difficult—until my foot hit soft snow and I would fall up to my knee. Jeanne took off her skis, too, suggesting that following her footsteps would keep me out of the holes, though I suspect she was mostly acting out of sympathy for my difficulty. 

    After walking like that for more than a mile, falling in holes and hauling myself back to the trail, I was happy to see Tomas returning to check on us. I gratefully accepted his offer to carry my skis. Once back at the hut, Tomas examined my broken ski, then took it to the sink, ran hot water over the binding to thaw the frozen mechanism, and handed it back to me, fixed.

     Another day we all put on snowshoes to climb to the Zeacliff outlook (1.5 miles, 1300-foot elevation gain). It was my first time on showshoes.

l-r: Sandra, Lisa, me.      photo by Tomas Dundzila  

I look happy enough, but I am not a convert. I prefer the graceful movement and silent glide of skiing—and the challenge of skills, too. But it took snowshoes to get to the overlook, where the view was stupendous, with panoramic views of the Pemigewasset Wilderness and snow-capped Mt. Washington. 

    The last day I was skiing along, happily and easily,

                                                    photo by Lisa Fleischer

back to the parking lot and our cars when Tomas, who was pulling the sled, stopped as I skied up to him. "Hop on," he said. "I'll pull you on the sled." I demurred (slightly), but he was serious. He wanted to see if it could be done; he would pull me until we got to the bottom of the uphill slope ahead. So I gleefully sat down atop the bundles, hung my feet over the front edge, set my skis on either side of me, and away we went, Tomas pulling, me clutching the sides of the sled as we bumped along.

    It was a barrel of fun.

    The whole trip was a barrel of fun—the wonderful people I met, the adventurous Zealand Falls hut, the climbs (even on snowshoes) to vistas, and the wonderful, challenging, beautiful skiing through deep, white, quiet snow. I came home with a healthy respect for the beauty and ruggedness of the White Mountains and warm feelings for my fellow snow-adventurers.

   Sallie (in front), Eugenia, Nancy, Jeanne.   photo by Tomas Dundzila

   That might have been the end of the story except for getting caught in a snowstorm the evening the official trip was over. Eugenia and I (Eugenia driving) were headed to the Boston airport when dark fell, along with the snow. The backcountry New Hampshire roads quickly became treacherous. When we saw the lights of a Dunkin Donuts gleaming in the emptiness, we gratefully pulled into the parking lot, went inside for a bite to eat, then came back to the car, pulled out our sleeping bags, and arranged ourselves for a night in the car. 

    In the wee hours of the morning we were awakened by a snowplow clearing the parking lot. When we got out of the car that morning, we found it blocked in with a two-foot wall of snow. I went inside to ask for a shovel while Eugenia tried to dig us out with the car's ice scraper ("Like using a toothpick to stir cake batter," she said) until she realized the four-wheel-drive rental car could probably crunch right through the snow, which it did. 

    We both missed planned visits with friends in Boston that evening, and I was sorry to miss a night in the Embassy Suites (with its shower), but both Eugenia and I got to the airport safely the next day and, later, to our respective homes, in Ohio and Oregon. I drove home from the airport in the dark, but not in the snow.

    Driving through the Rogue Valley the next day, I was surprised to see daffodils in bloom. It was another world from where I had been.

                                               photo by Lisa Fleischer

Skiing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—Part I: The Participants and the Hut

     There were eight of us on this Sierra Club ski-and-snowshoe trip in the White Mountains—five participants; two assistant leaders (Tomas Dundzila and Sallie Schramm); and the leader, Jeanne Blauner.

                                                               Photo by unknown bystander
l-r: Sallie, Tomas, me, Lisa, Jeanne, Sandra, Nancy, Eugenia.

They were from Maine (2), New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York (2), and Ohio—and me, from Oregon. I was there because this year's warm, dry, ugly winter drove me all the way to New Hampshire for snow and cold.

    And, yes, I got both.

  The first of my new experiences was to put microspikes on my boots

                                                                                photo by Tomas Dundzila

and hike an easy 3.2 miles from the Appalachian Mountain Club's Highland Center to the top of Mt. Willard for a stunning vista.

       Me on the precipice overlooking the vista.  photo by Lisa Fleischer      

     The next day we put on skis and snowshoes for the 6 1/2-mile trip to Zealand Falls hut. I was carrying a 25-pound pack,

                                                                                        photo by Lisa Fleischer

which wasn't too bad—I had been carrying 30 pounds in training—but I was puzzled at falling (I could ski that? Why had I fallen?) until I realized that the weight of my pack had changed my center of gravity. Once I accommodated for that, the skiing was easy, up and up, with an elevation gain of 1155 feet, until we came to a very steep uphill, where we took off our skis and climbed to the hut. Tomas, who had been pulling a sled loaded with group food and gear from the parking lot, managed to pull that heavy sled all the way to the hut, helped by Nancy and others pushing from behind. 

    Built in the 1930s, Zealand Falls hut is totally charming and has a magnificent mountain-view location. But I had to laugh at the altitude—2630 feet, about the same as my own house!

                                                             photo by Eugenia Costa-Giomi
Nancy, Lisa, Sandra, Jeanne, Sallie, Tomas, me in front of the hut. 

    It's a good thing I like cold! The dorm rooms are unheated. We slept in sub-freezing temperatures, shivered into ski clothes each morning, and had breakfast in the main room, where Parker, the charming young host, had coffee ready at 6:00 every morning, though no amount of bribery or begging would induce him to build a fire in the small wood-burning stove until 4:00 in the afternoon. (It was a matter of firewood supply.) We cooked our own meals and quickly realized that if we used the oven for breakfast (to bake granola, keep pancakes warm, whatever), we were adding heat to the room. 

    We ate exceedingly well on our own resources: lasagna the first night;

The lasagna                        photo by Lisa Fleischer

Argentinian lentil stew, prepared by Eugenia, our authentic Argentinian participant, the next night; and burritos the last night, with desserts of some sort—cake, pudding, cookies, chocolates—every night. As we gathered around the table for a group talk our last night at the hut, Parker slid a panful of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies onto the table for us.

    One late afternoon we saw a pine marten just outside the hut.

                                                                                    photo by Tomas Dundzila

    All three leaders were wonderful, but Tomas was the hero, not because he was the only man on the trip but because he pulled the sled to the hut, saving us extra weight in our packs, and because, again and again, we turned to him for help. "Tomas, I can't get my snowshoes buckled; will you help me?" "Tomas, my boot sole is loose; can you fix it?" Tomas, this; Tomas, that, and the answer was always yes and the problem was always fixed. 

Next week: Part II: Skiing, Snowshoeing, and Snowstorms.

Sallie (in front), Eugenia, Nancy, Jeanne.    photo by Tomas Dundzila

    

    

    

    

    

A Great Five Days of Skiing

    Last week I was skiing at Crater Lake National Park with a Sierra Club national outing. Such good company! (Sierra Club outings attract the most interesting people.) Such good food! (Mark Chang, trip leader, was also the trip's cook.) Such good leadership (Scott Mattoon and Jeannie Sivertsen in addition to Mark) and such good accommodations (at Union Creek Resort). As for the skiing, the snow was old and not at Crater Lake's usual depths, but nonetheless—such good skiing!

    This is what it all looked like:

    Day 0 (pre-trip scouting excursion, Scott and me). North entrance, 2 miles, 250-foot elevation gain. Conditions were not ideal. We had to manipulate skis over pick-up-stick tangles of downed logs and around saplings with treacherous hollows in the snow. But, we thought, we could maybe ski alongside the road instead of in the forest for the planned excursion to the north entrance two days later.

Skiing through the pick-up sticks

        This evening was the first official group activity: dinner, introductions, and orientation. 

    Dinner: Stir-fried dried tofu with Thai peanut sauce over rice linguine. 

    Day 1. West Rim Drive. 5 miles, 500-foot elevation gain. We skied past stunning views of Crater Lake and Wizard Island.

Me, Kate, Hope, Debra, Terri

We skied to Watchman, where we sat on the snow for lunch. On the return, four of us detoured onto the Lightning Spring trail, down gorgeous wide slopes with graceful turns. And then the long climb back up. The turns were worth the climb.

    Dinner, Italian: cheese and spinach ravioli with tomato pesto. 

    Day 2. East Rim Drive. 8 miles, 600-foot elevation gain. At a road junction we passed a sign with familiar words: Applegate (my address) and Grayback (the mountain I live on).

When we got to that spot on the way back, some of us turned down that road for another beautiful glide down a snow-covered road, again worth every bit of the climb back up. My good friend Kate Williams, a seasonal ranger at Crater Lake National Park, joined us for dinner and to talk about issues facing the Park (decline in newt populations, warming water temperatures, etc.). Everyone loved Kate.

Bottom row, l-r: Scott, assistant leader; Kate Williams, guest speaker; me
Top row, l-r: Hope, Kate, Peter, Debra, Mark Chang (trip leader), Diane, Terri
Photographer: Jeannie Sivertsen, assistant leader

    Dinner, Japanese: Mabo tofu over brown rice. 

    Day 3. North entrance. 7 miles, 500-foot elevation gain. To avoid the logs and the saplings, we skied alongside the road, which was great,

I'm in front here.

then onto a small rise where we could look down onto the pumice desert,

Me, Hope, Mark, Terri, Kate

then across the road to the Pacific Crest Trail, where we skied through beautiful woods of large hemlocks  and lodgepole pines, rollingly up and down, back to the cars. It was serene and beautiful.

I am skiing behind Kate

        Dinner, Indian: Aloo Gobi (curry potato and cauliflower) over basmati rice. 

    Day 4, phase 1. One and a half miles down the Pacific Crest Trail (Union Peak trail), starting south from Highway 62, descending on icy, bumpy, twig-and-needle-strewn, narrow ski trails until we admitted that it was difficult and not much fun, so we all skied back to the cars, where one group opted to drive up to the rim and ski or snowshoe there (or sit happily and comfortably in the cafe and contemplate the lake). I joined the other group: Scott and two other skiers (by far the best skiers on the trip, which was intimidating, but I thought I could do it) to ski from the road up the Pacific Crest Trail to the Dutton Creek trail and on up to the rim. Therefore:

    Day 4, phase 2. 4 1/2 miles, 800-foot elevation gain. This was OMG skiing. We climbed and descended a bit and climbed some more. We crossed creeks.

Hope, crossing Dutton Creek

We side-stepped up steep hills.

I'm doing the side-stepping here.

We manipulated too-fast, narrow downhills. We skied through big trees, past glimpses of snow-capped peaks, onto small patches of open ground, up knolls and down. We did a lot of trail-finding and not a small amount of trail-losing. It was so beautiful to be there in the quiet beauty of the snowy forest, testing our skills and our stamina, experiencing the oneness with such beauty that only comes with skiing. It was difficult, challenging, and beautiful. When I stepped off the trail onto the West Rim Road, I thought, "By gum, I did it!" 

Kate and Hope approach the rim at last.

Day 4, evening. Two guest speakers from Umpqua Watersheds joined us for dinner and to talk about enrionmental issues they work on. (The Umpqua River, like the Rogue and Klamath rivers, originates in Crater Lake National Park.)

    Dinner, Vietnamese: Pho with sweet chili sauce over salmon (my favorite dinner).

    Day 5. Everyone left for the airport or home or further aventures in Oregon. I drove home to wartm the house, tend to the raw blisters on my heels, and dream, every night for four nights, about skiing. In my dreams, I never fell.

My Latest Reading

     I have bought a new book. 

    Isn't it beautiful?

    

    My sister Sharon told me that when she was in college and had to develop a project for an academic paper, she suggested to her advisor that she read the dictionary.

    What a fabulous project! 

    But, she went on, her advisor frowned on the idea. He wanted a plan. Sharon said, "I want to know what would happen if I read the dictionary. Let's just start the project and see where it goes."

    Just imagine where it would go! Obviously it would lead to an improved vocabulary, even if she remembered only a small fraction of the new words she learned. Think of the many languages she would discover had contributed to English. And the fascinating etymologies she would learn—the vagaries of English pronunciations—the proportion of technical terms to everyday words—the obsolete words that were really too good to have been lost. The beauty of language. How long it would take to read the dictionary. Which letters had the most beautiful or unusual or obsolete words. And no telling what else. That was the beauty of the project.

    He would have none of it. She had to come up with another topic.

    What an opportunity lost. I've half a mind to do it myself. As it is, I've been challenged by a friend to write a poem based on a new word every day. So far the poems aren't very good, but the words elicit a lot of fun. Here is an example.

A Family of Artists

(Daedal: artistic, skillful. From Daedalus, Greek artificer of mythology)

 

My brother is good with wood.

My son is daedal with metal.

My mother was smart with art.

One sister paints like a saint

the power of flowers.

The other, a quainter painter,

is better with letters

adored and adorned.

I am absurd with words.

I make mazes with phrases

that leap or creep

all twisty and cvrispy

or steep into sleep.

But, however clever,

in the end I pen

a verse. Terse.

Bringing in the New Year

   Two days after Christmas I put up a Christmas tree?
  The day after New Year's Eve I have a party?

    Isn't that all kind of late?

    But by now, this being the third year of the event, a New Year's Day party at my house is an annual tradition. This year, I spent Christmas week with my son on Vashon Island, Washington. When I got home and turned my attention to the upcoming party, I realized that the house needed decorating, so I took my bow saw into the woods, cut down a little fir tree I had been keeping my eye on, set it up in the house, and decorated it with all my beloved ornaments. 

 

Then I made cookies.

Stained-glass-window cookies

Date bars

Hazelnut financiers

Eggwhite brownies

   Because eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is, according to Southern lore, good luck for the coming year, I set two large pots of black-eyed peas on the stove, one vegetarian, one with ham hock.

 I made two double batches of buttermilk cornbread. 

I set two bottles of red wine on the kitchen counter along with a corkscrew. I put white wine, sparkling water, and beer in a cooler nearby. I put every wine glass I had on the counter, along with water glasses.

    It was a drop-in-anytime affair. As guests arrived, I told them to help themselves.

    It was all a great success, because, really, for a good party all you need is good food and drink and great people, which I had in spades. 

    A parlor game might help, too. For this party, I suggested that guests bring three words or phrases for the new year, riffing on T. S. Eliot's lines: 

            For last year's words belong to last year's language

            And next year's words await another voice

            And to make an end is to make a beginning.

We put the words in a bowl, from which everyone drew a paper; then, in turn, we read the words. Sometimes the word wasn't comprehensible until the person who chose it explained it. "Maybe"? Well, yes, Margaret explained. It helps her take a step back and look at possibilities. "Autotelic"? "It means 'complete in itself,'" the guest explained, and comes from a history of Superman. My favorite word to come out of the game was ourobos, the end-in-the-beginning image, as of a snake with its tail in its mouth. (Last year's favorite was orophile, a lover of mountains.)

    My own three phrases played with past, present, future:

            A return to the wintry winters of the past. (Oh, I wish!)

            A future with a dependable democracy.

            All my loves and friendships always present in my life.

    That last phrase was fulfilled this holiday season, from Christmas with my son to a house full of friends on New Year's Day. As for the other two, I can only hope.

    

Winter Solstice

     Today is Winter Solstice, and to my great delight, it's raining at last.

It's a good hard, steady rain

an honest-to-goodness, how-it-used-to-be, Oregon rain.

It's a stay-in-the-house, knit-by-the-stove rain

or, if you prefer, an umbrella rain

a music-in-the-gutters rain

a beautiful, replenishing 

thank-the-gods 

rain.

Some people rejoice at Winter Solstice because they see it as the beginning of the end of winter dark, but I like even the dark of winter, which isn't really all that dark, anyway:

They say that winter is dark

But look!

The bright gleam of sun-struck silver under glowering dark clouds

Translucent icicles hanging from eaves

Noctilucent clouds on full-moon frigid nights

Waves of bright cloud-drifts in a dark rainstorm

The brilliant scintillations of star-spreads

Jack Frost's overcoat, glittering on fields as the sun comes up

Christmas lights, candlelight, luminous flames in the stove

Even on the darkest day of the year

Winter delights.

And, most of all, there's the hope, maybe even the promise, of snow:

Nothing is so beautiful]

    As snow-laden fir boughs against a cobalt sky

    The descending blue rushing towards whipped-cream peaks.

Nothing is so beautiful as the kiss of snowflakes

    whisper-soft from steel-gray clouds.

Nothing more magical than the inaudible fall of snow outside the window

    floating like down from overstuffed clouds

    the fire in the stove at your back shining like shook foil

Nothing is so beautiful as a winter landscape 

    charged with grandeur

    and gathered to a greatness

        of insuperable cold

        unsurpassable silence

        unconditional beauty.

A Toast to Joan Peterson, 1940-2025

Me (L) with Joan Peterson, July 2024
                                                photo by Beate Foit

    One of the poems in Joan Peterson's book of poetry, Looking for a Place to Write, is about getting a massage from her granddaughter, Haley. In the poem Joan talks about holding Haley when she was a baby, and now she, Joan, is in Haley's arms. The last lines read, 

            My daughter's daughter, you rock 

            me in your arms like a tiny child.

            You may carry me to the end of my life

            as I learn to let go.

    Last week Joan had a massage from Haley, then walked down the steps and let go of her life. She died before she got to her car.

        She was 84 years old.

    So I have, again, lost my best friend (Mike, Maren, …). For almost the whole of the 50 years I have lived in the Applegate, Joan has been my friend and closest good-friend neighbor. She was whom I would call to come up and have lunch,

Joan (L) with her granddaughter and my friend Maren,
at my house for lunch, 2010

to go to a concert, to ride with me to a meeting, or to meet the Tea Ladies for tea.  

Joan (L) with me (R) and the other tea ladies. 2019

    For ten years, Joan; her husband, Chris; three other friends, and I met monthly to share lunch and read poetry together. We called ourselves the Grayback Salon.

The Grayback Salon at my house, 2015
L-R: Me, Tracy Lamblin, Joan, Chris, Dan Lamblin
(Greeley Wells, is taking the picture)

    Joan started the Applegate Poets and urged me to join. She started the Friends of the Applegate Library and pulled me in, too. She offered me a membership in the Sierra Club if I would join the board, starting my ten years of service there. She started Voices of the Applegate, a singing group in the Applegate (which, no, she never talked me into joining). She was a beautiful singer; she and Chris, sang together at many gatherings. And she was a very good poet. When I am missing Joan now, I can go to her poems, where she is as alive as ever.

Joan reading her poetry at Britt Gardens,
in Jacksonville, Oregon, 2021

    Joan was magic with the animals on her farm—dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, goats, and, especially, the horses. When my son, Ela, was small, we had a horse, Baby Dee, whom we boarded at Joan's farm in exchange for stall-cleaning. 

    Once when Ela was little and while I didn't have a car, we walked the five miles down the road to Joan's house on Christmas Day for a drop-in visit, the way people in the country used to do. The house was full of merriment—people, food, drink, and song. We added poetry and puppets. It is a memory I have cherished for years. 

    Joan and I both taught in the English Department at Rogue Community College. We hiked together and skied together. We talked about books and poetry, about family and students, about teaching class and making cookies, about rough times and happy times. We were with each other in sympathy when our respective husbands died.

    Joan was such a close friend for so many years. She was a wonderful person and an important community member, and she had a talent for making many people—certainly I was one—think they were her best friend.  And for our particular friendship, that was true.