Thankful

The snow fluttering out of the trees and glittering in the sun is a glorious sight. From inside the house, it makes the wind seem like my friend.

But, when I'm outside, it doesn't seem like my friend anymore.

Both dogs turned into snow-dogs from the snow and wind.

After an easy early winter, we are now officially in the toughest phase that cycles between snow storms and wind storms.

K lay down and wriggled in the midst of a gale of snow pellets being hurled at us. It didn't seem like a bad strategy. The wind moves more slowly down next to the ground due to "ground effect" which is really friction between the wind and the ground.

Then, K told me what she really thought of the wind during one of its few lulls.

Near the end of my snow bike ride today, I began to believe that I was truly never going to make it home. Believe it or not, I was retracing the route that I'd taken on my way out. Do you see any signs of my tracks? Nope. A huge slab-like drift had covered them.

In a spot where the wind was whipping away all the snow toward our eastern neighbors, funny little sculptures remained. For some bizarre reason, little towers of snow with elk turds atop them had formed in the wind. Each tower was a couple of inches tall, and flying snow pellets are streaking past them in the photo. I laughed in the midst of my wind misery.

When I was almost home, I found another spot where every trace of my recent ride through a meadow was erased. If I'd been strong enough, I would have picked up my bike and carried it. It was so hard to push it through the slab of snow that constituted the meadow.

I whine about the wind. But, while I played with K in the forest in the gale, I remembered how thankful I am that she can run again after an entire fall of enforced inactivity. I also remembered that, one year ago, I was not allowed to ride a bike because I was recovering from spinal fusion surgery. Wind or no wind, I'm thankful to be capable of pedaling my snow bike.