Snow Frolic

What a fun morning!

It started out a little on the grumpy side, because who wants to have to get up on a Saturday morning to have to do something? So I grumped through coffee and grits-making, and then I was good to go.

We went XC skiing on the Konza Prarie - a tallgrass prairie which covers thousands of acres in this part of Kansas. There were three of us Saturday morning adventurers. The temperature started out a brisk, foggy 18º, and progressed rapidly to a warm, and then sweaty 18º. The snow was perfect: not too much ice, not too much powder: the perfect glide to be had. Unsuspected boulders popped up here and there, and they certainly kept us on our toes - no one enjoys going from a forward-gliding motion to an immediate standstill.

There are two narrow simple suspension foot bridges we had to ski across to get to the prairie. One has rope railings, and the other, none. Going across to get to the prairie didn't seem too daunting, in that it was an incline on both, and slow and steady got us across just fine. Coming back across to get back to the trailhead...that was another story altogether. Declines on both snow-covered bridges. The bridge with rope railings didn't cause too much concern in my wee little brain. But the final bridge, snow-covered with a 10-foot drop into the creek below and no railing to slow my speed or my imaginary veering off-course was simply an exercise in Fear Factor.

Anyone who has owned horses, ridden horses, watched show jumping or eventing can get a grasp of what my wee little brain, much like a panicked Thoroughbred, was doing at the edge of the bridge: hyperventilating, maneuvering, backing up a bit, looking forward, down below, thinking of all the horrendous things that WOULD happen to me once that little thing called gravity took its course and sent me barreling first too fast across the bridge, and then barreling down the expanse onto the ice and water ten feet below.

Well. I did make it across. I am such a baby. Later, at home, I commented to that Spouse o' Mine, "I do not understand why a bridge makes me so nervous like that!"

"Cause it's dangerous." was his reply. (I think he was trying to make me feel better about it.)

postscript: I forgot to mention how fatigued my arms are tonight; what would normally be cello time is being preempted by something requiring something other than perpendicular arm position. Online Scrabble, perhaps...