Snow ... Freezing Rain ... Rain ... Sun

Saturday there was so much snow on the ground in the ravine from the overnight snowfall of the night before we could barely shove ourselves through the usual circuit. And didn't, in fact, because we couldn't manage it; just too tough. So we did half a circuit, and ended up feeling as exercised afterward as though we'd done the usual circuit twice over. It was surpassingly beautiful though, all that lovely new snow blanketing the landscape.

We did a whole lot better on Sunday for by then the trails had been well tamped down. Thank heavens for those groups who love to haul through on snowshoes on occasion. Usually snowshoes aren't required in there, and it's rather amusing to see snowshoe devotees doing their thing on tamped-down trails, but Saturday was their day, to be sure. They hailed up hill and down, dogs in tow, infants strapped on their backs and fronts and bravely demonstrated their pioneer instincts.

When we were younger we used to do just that, ourselves. But in an entirely different terrain. Where snow reached amazing depths, and only the wild denizens of the area were to be seen, no other people around for miles. Just us, fearlessly treading in our modified Green Mountain snowshoes, occasionally coming across a deer or two, startled to see us in their neck of the woods. Look up...up...up. There's a huge Snowy owl, what a sight. That was then, this is now, and we restrain ourselves to walking up our residential street to the ravine.

By Sunday then, the trails were friendly once again, and we were able to amble up and down the ravine to our hearts' delight, at temperatures much more kind than the previous week's. We and a host of others from the community. Never before have we seen such throngs; entire families out with their family dog, tramping the ravine trails. And our stupid little Riley snarling at them all; who are they, daring to enter his sacred precincts?

And then, overnight Sunday, hours of freezing rain. By morning our driveway was a broad sheer expanse of shining ice. The freezing rain followed by plain old rain. And then - out came the sun! And so did we, entering the ravine under a sunny sky, yet under the trees it was as though the rain had never stopped. For all the accumulated snow, covered with ice, bringing heavily-laden pine boughs down to ground level, was beginning to melt. And it dripped continually from the trees as we progressed along the trails.

Still, before melting completely, there was the sublime vision of bare twigs and boughs of hardwood trees backlit by the sun, the shining sheath of ice coating them gleaming and glowing surreally.