Nature's Christmas Light

We had that incredible sunrise light this morning that I've been craving. Deep winter is when the sun rays are unbelievably red at sunrise. The sunrise light around Christmas awes me every year.

The only problem was that we were up late last night having a celebration with our extended family - so Shyla and I had to drag ourselves out of bed earlier than we wished to see the sunrise. Shyla seemed as tempted to snooze as I was!

We could only stay in one place for a short time because it was so cold that I was having trouble feeling my camera shutter finger. So, we started moving around, getting the blood flowing again.

As we got moving, Shyla did a "stay" with her shadow lurking behind her.

 And then I called her - and I loved seeing her shadow dance across the boulders behind her.

After that, it was really time to get moving to ward off hypothermia, with me pedaling hard through loose snow and Shyla running next to me. I couldn't take more photos for quite a while due to numb fingers.

After our sunrise photos, we did a fabulous snow bike route that I've been packing down over the past few days. We may get a lot of snow on Christmas night so I'm taking full advantage of the nice snow biking conditions that we have now. We saw the start of the stormy weather over the Divide from Hug Hill.

With the clouds over the Divide, we also got the pre-storm wind, which lifted one of Shyla's ears straight into the air while we played fetch on Hug Hill.

Although it was cold and blustery, we had tons of fun during our ride. I am so happy with how Shyla's behavior has improved over the past two months. She's a reliable and very fun biking partner!

Happy Christmas Eve!