Ski season is here. After months of arid blue skies we've finally been hit with a series of storms across the Northwest. Six inches of snow in the Boise valley were slushed away with days of rain, but the Front is still white and billowy. I had the afternoon off, and Ada being with her grandmother, I jumped in the truck and sped up to Bogus Basin for a few hours of skiing. To the south, the valley was hidden in clouds, but the backside of Bogus was in sunshine. It's a great feeling to look down on clouds: clouds threading apart in the rosy afternoon light, nearly within hand's reach; the sky opening to the north above rolling white-blue mountains and the white shards of the Sawtooth Range some sixty miles away.
It was Monday and just about nobody was up skiing. There was a four to six inch layer of new powder in the trees, enough to make my legs forget that this was the first telemark venture of the year. Perhaps the nice thing about the late snow arrival is its nearness to Spring. We don't have months and months of snow to dig through, and the tinge of warmth in the air gives both an elated spring feeling and a sense of urgency, even sentimentality, to those of us who love being in the snowy mountains. Of course, the dry winter will cost us. Summer and its fires will come. But for now it was good to have a dose of the white stuff, watch the spinning gold of the clouds against the pale blue, and forget the concerns below.
No comments:
Post a Comment