Archive for ‘January, 2009’

Snowshoe Surgery

I love snowshoeing. I love the quiet, being out with Karl, being able to go up, down and around things.

About 12 years ago, I rented a pair of snowshoes to go on a group excursion to cut Christmas Trees. The snow was deep and powdery. I fell in love with snowshoeing and found my first pair, Tubbs, slightly used, at the Army-Navy store in Whitefish. I bought a second pair of Tubbs in a short length for use on packed trails and ice – the crampons and general stability from the larger footprint is wonderful on ice.

10 years ago, I bought another pair – Salomon’s – out of a catalog…because I thought they looked cool.

I LOVE the Salomon’s (top 2 photos – Tubbs orginal in the bottom photo). I only use the others when I am trying to convert someone to snowshoeing. I give them the Salomons which are easy to adjust to different boot sizes and have the most wonderful binding system. In addition, that toe piece allows for a more natural stride as well as giving a bit more stability.

I have never seen the Salomons again in a catalog. I’ve never seen them in a shop. So far, I can’t find a U.S. store that sells them online. I spent a good part of last evening and again this morning looking…

…because yesterday, after slightly over 10 years of use, one broke. When I first got this pair, I wondered about the hard plastic bottoms as well as the plastic ratchet bindings. But, 10 years later, they have stood up. I can get in and out of these with gloved hands. In the past weeks with snow, ice and frozen snow, I have them on and off 6-7 times a day – I don’t even walk to the garage without them because of the ice.

The Tubbs, they work fine in the snow. They are a huge pain to get into and out of. The binding systems on snowshoes are one of the main complaints as you read reviews of different models and brands. I have no idea why the Salomons did not catch on in the U.S.

I will keep looking, but in the meantime – repair has been attempted:

Now, we wait…

A Wonderful Day

I got up.

I fed Bob.

I started the coffee…

My work day started early and went well.

I work with a team of 2 others – 2 wonderful men who are smart, professional, caring fathers and husbands, thoughtful of me and of each other. It is a pleasure to work with them. One, I have never met in person – the other just once. Most of our interaction is by email, phone and an internet conference program – the workplace of the 21st century.

Midday, I had a break and Karl and I went for a long walk/snowshoe. We are still under the inversion stratus, in the damp and cold, but as it is below freezing, the snow is hard, crusty and easy for both of us to stay on top of.

Afternoon – more work on my own.

Late afternoon, Big John’s picks up the snowblower for the second time. I have a nice visit with the young men who do the pickup. They ask good questions about the blower’s problems. I mention my trip to Blacktail – one of them skied at Big Mountain (Whitefish) yesterday and we compare notes about the beauty of being up in the sun. We laugh.

A bit more work and then a break for dinner, a glass of wine on the front porch while a lasagna from my freezer bakes in the oven.

Karl waits for some lasagna…

Karl shares some lasagna…

Some of us think about bedtime…

…a wonderful day.

From the mountain top

From the valley…

…to the mountain top.

The freezing fog, it usually comes with another phenomonon – an inversion. Warm air up high overruns cold air in the valleys. Under high pressure it creates an inversion – between the warm upper air and the cold valley air lies the stratus.

In the valley, under the status, we have had cold temperatures accompanied by high humidity and so the freezing fog.

Karl’s and my mission today was to see the inversion from the other side. We headed for Blacktail Mountain, home of Blacktail Mountain Ski Area – an “upside-down” mountain in that the day lodge and parking are at the top of the mountain. The ski runs go down into a hanging valley. But the important thing for my purposes was that the lodge and parking area were above the fog deck…in the sunshine! And the temperature at 8:00 a.m. was already 40 compared to 25 at my house.

The road to Blacktail Mountain takes off from MT Highway 93 in Lakeside, MT. The road is 12 miles from Hwy 93 to the top of the mountain. It is 35 mph max and much of it is 15-25 mph hairpin curves. The road has it’s excitement in the winter and that 12 miles takes at least 40 minutes.

As we ascended into the stratus…

Going up I had occasional glimpses of the stratus deck from above as we cleared that, but the driving demanded my full attention. The road is barely 2 lanes, narrowed by the plowing, and sometimes the wish for a much higher guardrail, or any guardrail at all was more prominent in my mind than the view.

But as we cleared the fog layer and came into the sun and the cloudless blue sky at the summit…

These photos do not begin to convey what it really looked and felt like. The high mountain peaks poked through the fog layer looking like islands in an ocean of soft cottony seas.

It was over 50 degrees. The sun was so bright and strong that I was too warm immediately. There were other people there – all of us smiling and laughing and enjoying the sunshine. The ski area is only open Wed-Sunday so I was able to walk out on the summit on this day.

I got Karl out of the Jeep and we walked around the parking area. His tongue was soon hanging out…too hot for a black dog with a heavy coat!

We started back down.

I have always said that this gloom that we sometimes get in winter does not bother me as I’m always out a lot. But, that sun, it was wonderful. And the indescribable beauty from the mountain top made me feel like I had been on a wonderful vacation.

The transition down was beautiful as well as a little sad – From the mountain top to the valley.

Looking backward

Reader Melissa in El Cajon, in an email to me, commented that her vet said that “orange cats make the best pets”. I remember thinking that was funny-odd in that most of the vet clinic cats … in my experience, have been calicos. And then I had to laugh as I was thinking that I have been, with Bob (my orange cat), in a LOT of vet clinics… And this led further to the remembrance of our – Bob and my – “many clinic” experiences between Iowa and Montana in the summer of 2006 and how that changed Bob, Karl’s and my life.

Martha Beck, in a her book “Steering by Starlight (How to live your best destiny, no matter what)” has a chapter with an exercise on “telling your life story backwards”. Simplified, it entails looking at an event or outcome that you consider wonderful and working backwards over the events that led you to this wonderfulness which often begins with a “Supposedly bad event that eventually supported my favorite thing”.

It is an interesting exercise.

One of my stories involves my orange cat, Bob.

One of my favorite things: my little house on its 8 plus acres of woods on a foothill of the Continental Divide

The supposedly “bad” event that eventually supported my favorite thing: Bob became very ill in Iowa

2006…Iowa, in the motorhome, wending my way back to Montana after a 6 month cruise cross country and back. It was mid-July. I had stayed in the mid-west to attend the wedding of my best friend’s son. Right after the wedding, I pointed the beast west. I stopped in Iowa to attend to some motorhome problems – Iowa is home to Winnebago as well as to many things RV related. I landed at a wonderful rural RV park: Colony Country Campground , in Iowa City, Iowa. I based here for 7 days – getting the RV maintenance done and then just as I was set to leave, Bob became ill.

As a side note, the extra time spent in Iowa was instrumental in the beginning of a wonderful friendship with the daughter of the campground owners – she manages the campground. I stayed at Colony Country again in Spring of 2008 as I returned to Montana from Florida. A wonderful spot and I’m grateful to have found the spot and started the friendship.

Bob was lethargic, not using the litter box, and had a temperature…the fact that he allowed me take his temperature was very telling. He spent the night at the clinic, which is a teaching clinic and staffed 24/7. The owner/vet phoned me at 11:30 p.m. to tell me that he was very worried about Bob as he was not eating. I had a mostly sleepless night. But when I got up at 5 a.m. I did a bit of a doubletake – he was not eating???? Well, he wouldn’t – not his dish, not his food. I was at the clinic at 6 a.m. with Bob’s dish and some tuna fish. He ate, he had used the litter box. I returned after 8 and picked him up over the objections of the clinic…but with antibiotics. We stayed in Iowa a few more days – all was normal with Bob and he was tolerating the antibiotics. We proceeded west.

Backing up a bit…while in the mid-West, awaiting the wedding date, we were in northern Michigan – Traverse City – near where my family vacationed when I was growing up. I have a great-Aunt who lived there at the time. I enjoyed visiting, was working, and also was extremely homesick for Montana. I perused the internet for Montana property. I found the listing for the place I now call home. It was listed at a price above my range. I asked my friend Kris to look at it for me and let me know what she thought. She looked. She phoned me after and said: “Ann, this place is you!”. I was on the internet, making air reservations to fly back, but it all felt wrong – leaving the pets, disrupting my work schedule, the cost… I called her and said that I couldn’t do it. I said that if it was right, it would be there when I returned.

Fast forward to Spearfish, SD. Spearfish was a place that I had liked on a previous car trip east. I wanted to take some time to look around. I also wanted to look at the Red Lodge, MT area.

But Bob became ill again in Spearfish. The Spearfish vet did extensive blood testing and came up with some disturbing results which pointed to a condition that would require long term treatment. I made the decision to head immediately for “home” and for my home vet.

We saw our home vet upon arrival in the Flathead Valley. Bob seemed fine. The home vet blood work showed no abnormalities. They ran it twice to be sure. Bob continued to seem fine and normal. $1000 in vet bills later and I had a well cat with no explanation.

Back in the Flathead Valley, I felt at home and started looking for a place -not on wheels – to call home.

The first thing I did was to look at the place that I saw on the internet from Michigan. The price had been reduced. I decided not to buy it. I could see the work that would be involved. I had been a bit overwhelmed at my last house which had 2 ½ acres of yard to be mowed and trimmed. My handyman from there walked this house and property and we talked about the driveway (good news privacy, bad news maintenance and snow removal), the flat roof, the woods…

I looked at a lot of “subdivision” places – more $$, less work … kept coming back to this place in my head. It was my birthday, I was looking at yet another house and suddenly said to the realtor – “I’m going to take Karl to La Brant and just spend some time”..it had been empty for months. I walked around the woods with Karl, sat in the back of the open Jeep and just took in the stillness and made up my mind that I wanted this. I made an offer in my price range…

So, the supposedly “bad” event that lead me to getting the “good” thing, was Bob becoming ill. After getting settled in the house, I found 2 mostly healed wounds on Bob – large wounds on either side as if an owl had tried to pick him up. This probably happened in Ohio, when I was parked at my friend’s, as this was the only place he was out early or late. Bob’s illness sent me straight back to Montana in perfect time to get this place, which is perfect for me.

Looking backward. The more experience I have at the way supposedly “bad” events turn “good”, the better equiped I am to deal with and in fact be grateful for the “bad” events, even while enduring them. In the midst of a challenging or difficult time, there is that knowledge that somehow, somewhen, something wonderful is likely to happen or be learned.

Freezing Fog

When the temperature is below freezing and there is fog, then we have freezing fog. We have it now. We are forecast to have it until late next week. Here is what it looks like…

No mountain tops, a haze of cold fog that freezes as ice crystals on some of the trees. I am not sure why some trees and not others, but I’m guessing that just like fog swirls around things, this freezing fog swirls also, hitting some trees and not others.

It hits the roads also and it hit my road. I was going to take Karl to the park by the lake and see what things looked like there, but after seeing my road I changed my mind and we walked here at home. And since the lake keeps things warmer around it, there might have been nothing to see…

Freezing fog or not, we walk and we play…

The soccer ball is close to being skinned. This particular ball was acquired in Ohio in Spring of 2006. Maybe we’ll spring for a new one THIS Spring!

Friday morning waning moon

Taken at 5:56 a.m. 1/16/2006

Canon S3 IS Manual Mode
ISO 100
F 7.1
Shutter 1/160
Focal length 72mm*
Continuous motor
Tripod

Image was cropped but otherwise is SOOC as is below which I added after the original post…nothing on the camera lens, some reflection I think causing the extra shadows. Above was image17 and below image22 – taken within 30-60 seconds of each other, just different camera settings.

ISO 100
F 5.0
Shutter 1/400

*I included this info but this is not 35mm equivalent…72mm on this camera is ??? – it has more “zoom” than the 17-85mm lens on my Rebel. That 17-85mm is equivalent to an 18-135 in 35mm. The “real” focal length on the smaller cameras – I don’t understand the equivalents myself yet.