Let it snow!

Yesterday afternoon, an unexpected snow storm hit. The forecast was for snow showers but we already had a fresh 4-6" by the time the Duo and I hiked.

The Duo was ecstatic about the snow, playing a lunatic game of chase the dog who has the stick. Since K's toe amputation, she's been the chaser in stick games and rarely actually catches R unless he lets her.

Not yesterday. She turned on the afterburners and snagged the stick. For the first time in recent memory, R was chasing K!

It kept snowing as we hiked. The fresh snow was so slick that I canceled my plans to explore a steep ravine. We enjoyed the silence and solitude as our world was transformed.

This morning, it didn't even cross my mind that it might be too much snow to plow through with my snow bike. So, I headed out as usual. Soon, I was floundering and fishtailing. Riding was an exercise in futility because the trails weren't packed down even slightly.

Because we stayed on the main trail, we saw our neighbor with a pack of 6 dogs (2 of her dogs stayed home today). The dynamic of these meetings evolves as the neighbor's pack composition changes. Her GSD is a relatively new member of the pack. When he first joined the pack, he was all fun and games but now he's become competitive about human attention. He tries to get between me and K and then intimidates her when she wriggles back to her normal position. In the photo below, K has claimed the coveted position next to my bike, and he is telling her to move.

My neighbor said that she wanted to record my craziness (biking in a foot of fresh snow) for posterity. In this photo, you can see the GSD has taken over K's spot. At his heart, he's a big sweetie so K and I can handle his pushiness.

Soon, K and I turned toward home to trade the bike for cross country skis.

As we restarted our outing, now on skis, the snow bombarded us.

K led the way, plowing through the snow like a barge, making my job of breaking trail slightly easier.

She kept looking back at me as if to say "What's holding you up?".

K made her own fun while I plodded along in the fresh deep snow. She porpoised like a graceful dolphin through the sea of snowflakes.

We arrived home sleepy and content. Our forest needed this snow, and it was fun to have a change of pace!

We saw almost no animal tracks in the forest. However, shortly after we arrived home, a coyote passed through our clearing. I captured his image as he departed.

He hurried away - seemingly knowing that he'd been spotted.

I don't know what coyotes do during big storms. I don't think that they go into dens. I like to visualize them under the protection of the boughs of a bushy pine tree, all piled together keeping each other warm.

I never see bobcat tracks during a storm. I suspect that they find small small caves and hole up for the duration of bad weather, emerging to feverishly hunt after the storm ends. While I packed down the trails with my skis today, I grinned as I imagined the bobcats and coyotes using my paths after the storm is over to go find food for their empty stomachs.

The skies cleared by the end of the day. The temperature plummeted as the sun set, stinging my face with the bite of cold, but the four of us enjoyed an easy ski to end the day underneath the umbrella of an eggshell blue and pink sky.