Over A Dry Patch

I needed to head to bed early last night for an early rise and I was on calls from before 4:00AM till 6:30AM or so when there was a lull.  The Mrs. had bagged up a lot of cardboard last night.  As always, by the time garbage day rolls around, there are many bags of garbage.  I don’t think the trucks swing through till at least 7:00AM and I head out and load up the SUV, stuffing up the back seat as well as the trunk.

 

Today everything got warm so quickly.  By 11:00AM it was nearly fifty degrees.  I could see snowpack on the trail and sure enough, there was enough of a track left to ski, but just barely.  And for the first time in a while I couldn’t get my binding to catch.  I could see that there was some detritus in the boot that wouldn’t come out.  But when I grabbed my boot and turned it, I could see there was a tremendous acorn cap that was obviously preventing the bindings from catching.  By the time I started down the trail I could tell, now, suddenly that my right pole was bending at the tip.  The pole no longer had the fiber to stand straight and each time when I planted down the pole would bend.  I kept imagine telling the people I rent from that it happened on the last day of the year, as if that were somehow significant. 

I met a couple.  Like the couple yesterday that suggested I was a “die hard.” Guess so.  But this was fun, not drudgery.  Surely.  Clomping over a dry patch where the snow had melted, coping with what were still big sheets of ice in places, it all had the air of finality about it.  This ability to ski down here this way, was about to end, likely later today in rivulets of melted ice. 

 

I’ve been reading Judge Dee mysteries with the little one.  “The Chinese Maze Murders” is, I believe the first in the series.  She had said not long ago that she imagined she would have enjoyed living in medieval China or Japan, Han Dynasty, please, as it is before the custom of foot binding becomes prevalent.  The complicated confrontation with life as woman in Han Dynasty or Heian Japan notwithstanding, I certainly understand what it is like to be away from China and to miss it dearly and to find some solace in reading about the place.  Judge Dee is tough, sagacious, independent and surrounded by a memorable posse.  Campy, dramatic, it makes for fun reading.

 

 

 

Wednesday, 03/10/21