May the sun shine

As we slide inexorably toward the shortest day of the year, I accidentally find myself walking in the evening dusk more often than I care to admit. Last evening, K and I walked in light snow flurries with a half moon beaming down on us.

This morning, my sweet chocolate girl had regained her playful verve. She sniffed under the snow and came up with a white nose.

As we walked, with K presumably well restrained by a leash, she launched into puppy-like antics. She did a playbow combined with a spin, all without getting tangled in her leash. Then, completely out of the blue, she launched herself airborne high over a juniper bush. As her final flourish of the walk, she climbed onto a gigantic stump and stood exultant above me. Although I felt guilty that I hadn't acted quickly enough to stop her from climbing onto her precarious perch, I took advantage of her defiant pose and removed her leash for a photo.

K's enthusiasm for life is growing exponentially since her surgery. She has no idea that there's something huge to be worried about. I'm trying, as hard as I can, to follow her lead. It's easiest to do mimic her carefree attitude when I'm with her, watching her playing happily by my side.

After I dropped off K, I headed out into a dreich day for a snow bike ride. I haven't glimpsed our mountains in days due to a curtain of snow clouds veiling them. Somewhere, behind the closer tree-covered hills in the photo below, the gorgeous Continental Divide towers.

I toiled away, churning my pedals in circles with all my muscle power to ride through the snow. I rode through snow flurries, clouds that surrounded me, and then finally sunshine. On the ground, you can barely see the tracks of my snow bike and coyotes.

As I pedaled along the sinuous path shown above, suddenly, the path became an elk superhighway. The snow was pocked down to dirt by the hooves of at least a hundred elk. They were just ahead of me - so close that I could smell the herd. You know that they're very close if a *human* can smell them!

Just as quickly, their path plunged down the canyon wall. An elder cow elk always leads the herd. I wonder where she was taking them. No obvious destination sat in their path.

I checked a wildlife camera on my way home, and I found that a cute little buck had visited last night in the frigid winter air.

The wildlife camera outside our house took 200 photographs of coyotes last night. Like last winter, they seem to gravitate to our clearing when the hunting outlook is bleak. Compare this adult coyote to the lanky youngster who visited in mid-summer.

Rumor has it that the sun will shine tomorrow. I hope that it shines both literally and figuratively!