Snow: I'm Melting...Melting!!!

This evening I fastened on my skis and took what may be my last jaunt on XC skis for a while: the snow is melting! Before sundown I headed out to our pasture for an hour and a half of arctic fun.

Last week that Spouse o' Mine and I had made a few trails and tracks to play around on when we weren't out skiing on the Konza Prairie or the local golf course or parks. We don't have crop circles, but we do have parallel lines running at all angles in our little patch of land. Those week-old tracks have been melting, then freezing, then melting again, taking on a luge-like quality that requires strong ankles, good balance, and quick thinking. Tonight I opted to blaze some new trails for Biserka the Bouvier and myself. And off we went!

When one runs, cycles, skis, or does any type of repetitive exercise over a length of time, he can get lost in thought, and this is a really relaxing thing (to me, anyway.). I slid across the now-frozen snow and looked down at the animal tracks around me: little birds, big birds, little kitty cat (?), LARGE kitty cat (?)..feral...bobcat?..the big dog Biserka, the huge horses' rolling spots in the snow... occasionally I would look up and not know exactly where I was in our little pasture. To me, that is escape.

The sun set, the temperature immediately dropped, and Biserka and I kept playing out there. We went down by the woods by the creek; remindful of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

My little horse (dog) must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year...

Down there, after sunset, I stopped, stock-still, and could hear the owls in the woods. And then, the coyotes down at the river, wailing their evening songs. The only other noise was Biserka's paws breaking through the frozen snow.

How can anyone not like winter?

I have enjoyed this week of snow so much. I could make a diatribe about this (actually, I did, and deleted it just now.)

Suffice to say,

"Fun is good." ~ Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

Postscript, on Wednesday morning: I managed another hour and a half out on my skis this morning; ski report: overcast and 24º, some ice, but still some powder.