Sledding with the girls and a mid-winter’s stroll…
Now that the temps have come up and the SUN has come back we have been getting the girls outside as much as possible. I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to feel the sun’s rays on my face for the first time in what must be 7 weeks. I lived in Oregon’s rainy Willamette valley for much of my life and it was sunless and gloomy there much of the winter, but you always had a vague feeling that somewhere behind all those heavy blue clouds the sun was there. Here at the top of the world its a different feeling altogether. The sun vanishes completely. There is ambient light, of course and it is not nearly as dark here as I thought the winter would be. But after being lost from the sun for so long, the anticipation grows each day until that joyful moment when the sun peeks over the hills in the distance for just a moment and then vanishes again. It is enough. The sun will rapidly begin lifting its arc above the hills every day, and both the dogs and humans look to it for warmth and hope. To me, the darkness of deep winter is a welcome quiet and calmness. After the summer of the sun never going down, and the heightened activity of every living thing it seems like the hush of winter is a welcome rest.
We took advantage of one beautiful afternoon by doing some sledding down the trail right in front of the cabin. It was great fun, and they girls enjoyed it very much. We did some sledding on some smaller slopes around the cabin before we moved up to the big hill. The girls were timid the first time going down, but after that they wanted to keep going. We had a wonderful time and boy were the girls wiped out that night. They walked up the hill several times by themselves!
The next afternoon was sunny and perfect. The girls and I plus one of our puppies went for a walk. It was so nice to get out with the girls and frolic in the sunshine. The girls made snow angels and had fun tramping through the deep snow. I had fun getting them to pose for all kinds of great pictures! The vastness of the landscape that we live in cannot be captured in photographs. If you can imagine things 10,000 times bigger, broader and more beautiful than the pictures show, it might be an accurate estimation.
