Good news and a snow day!

I awakened feeling sluggish, as I looked at the bigger than expected snowfall outside our windows. Soon, however, the day turned around. It seems that we have a date for R's surgery! The surgeon still needs to get plane tickets so I'm still cautious about celebrating too much. However, if things continue to fall into place, his surgery will be in early April. That will be the first step toward making him able to romp in our forests again!

My attitude was substantially different after hearing that news. Shyla and I headed out for a snowshoe hike. The snow was much too deep to try to ride my fat bike without some work packing down the trails first.

Shyla was her usual exuberant self in fresh snow. She loves snow!

It was deep enough that she had to start moving from in the snow by popping straight upward! That move always makes me laugh!

After popping upward, she could gallop pretty normally, especially when she was in my snowshoe tracks.

Her clear-eyed joy was obvious to me.

Even after two passes on a trail with my snowshoes, it was impossible to ride my snow bike on the trails so I pedaled toward a nearby side road with almost no traffic, except for elk. As I started down the road, I spotted a small group of elk standing closely bunched together in a meadow. It was snowing very hard at that point.

On my return ride, I saw them again, this time lying in the snow. I wonder how this splinter group got separated from the rest of the herd. Having seen the whole herd together several times this year, I know it has somewhere in the range of 200 elk in it.

This scene is a typical March scene for us. March means lots of snow and elk hanging out in the meadows near our house. Sometimes the snow is hard for me to handle because I'm ready for springtime. However, after I get outside in the elements, I usually appreciate the wintery beauty.

Although I loved my time outside today, the best part of the day was finding out that R's surgery will happen fairly soon. It'll be a tough surgery and a tough recovery. However, I'm thrilled that we're finally close to starting that journey.