Pseudo-Spring is in the Air!

Another week has flown by and here I am again. 

This week, I am held firmly in the grip of pseudo-spring. 

I am so blessed to have grown up and to live in the Rocky Mountains.  I can't think of a more dazzling or enchanting place to called home.  This time of year is a heartache.  We all buckle down to face the winter.  Sure there are those people out snowmobiling, skiing and ice fishing, but I am not one of those.  I gave a hearty try to the snowmobiling thing and it's just a LOT of work. It seems like it would just be point the skis in the right direction and go, but it isn't.  There are all these hills to climb and drifts to get stuck in. Then you have to dig and haul that heavy machine back where it should be; in parkas, snow pants, scarves and ski masks. And fleece long johns, wool socks, knee high Sorrel boots, a t-shirt, sweatshirt, two pairs of gloves and earmuffs. It's a LOT of clothes and by the time you are done, you are sweating from the exertion...in 20 degree temps...with sweat cycles in your hair.  Not to mention, sometime during the day, in the woods, in all those clothes, you are going to have to pee.  Girls, you see where I'm going with this.  There are also all these skills to hanging off the side of the machine so that it won't roll down a cliff that it turns out, I just don't have.  Upon much soul searching and contemplation of a few of the downright terrifying cliffs I'd been facing, I gave it up.  It seems a complete blasphemy to say that I grew up in Colorado and don't ski.  I gave that a good try too - cuz it seemed like I should - I'm just no good! It was a no go on ice skating, too. So during the winter, I do what most rational, not-so-athletic people do.  I hibernate.  Just like a bear.  I stay warm and cozy in my house, wearing sweaters and slippers.  I curl up with good books and mugs full of hot beverages.  I make homemade soups and breads.  I organize my house and rearrange the furniture.  I make things.  I watch the snow fall out the window and love it.  It's a grand life!

Now though...things they are achangin'. You can feel it in the air!  It's MARCH!  St. Patrick's Day is this weekend!  That is a sure sign that spring is coming to my little corner of the Rockies.  The wind blows differently.  Warm and chilly at the same time.  Ice and snow are melting rapidly, leaving behind what I not-so-affectionately call, "Mud Season". And on that warm-chill wind is a familiar scent - an old friend of mine - it's the smell of where the wild things are.  It's sage and mold.  It's trees thinking about budding.  It's dirt roads and fishing holes unlocked from the ice.  Things are on the move again.

Of course, it's only March.  Hence, the pseudo-spring.  It's not really time yet.  If you went out into the hills right now, you'd find more snow and all that mud.  You still can't go anywhere. And there WILL be more snow!  But things in the house change.  Fishing gear gets hauled out and mended; cleaned up and organized.  The boat gets dragged out of storage and sent for an tune up.  The camping gear gets washed, replenished and repacked.  Because it is time to prepare for the REAL spring and that glorious Rocky Mountain Summer!  Held ever more dear because it is so swiftly fleeting.  Sweaters and slippers get swapped for shorts and wading boots.  Mugs full of hot drink morph into lemonade and ice cold beer.  No more soup and bread, this is the time of year to cook everything on or in a real fire.  I will abandon my house and give myself up to living in the forest.  Books will be read in hammocks on the river, by that mercurial, erratic shadow-sun light that filters down through the trees.

There is nothing like a Rocky Mountain summer!  Even when I was very little kid, I knew summer meant mountains; rocks, trees, rivers, lakes, cool breezes and thin, crisp air.  Most weekends in summer were spent exploring - Central City (in the 70's it was the BOMB!), Nederland, Georgetown Lake - my dad behind the wheel, singing "16 Tons", always edging over to where the windy, two-lane asphalt dropped steeply off into a canyon, causing my mother to freak out and us girls to squeal with laughter. It was trips to Mesa Verde, Glenwood, Gunnison, Steamboat and Telluride. It was horseback riding at Trapper's Lake and fishing the White River. It was wading and rock hounding and making sandwiches on picnic tables covered in bird poo.  It was running for shelter from sudden summer storms and rodeos on wooden bleachers. It was picking and collecting leaves and flowers under cobalt blue skies.  It was tents and campfires on obsidian nights full of a million stars.   It means the exact same things now that I'm grown, although a few things have changed.  I spend more time fishing and the place names read different - Virginia City, Philipsburg, Seely, Gardiner, Livingston, Rock Creek - and I still go to Georgetown Lake!  The places that are magical to me - old friends that you visit once or twice a year.  And always new places that I will not fail to recognize because I see them in my dreams.

This time of year is exciting to me! It's a physical and mental thrumming. Here come all the reasons I live in these sometimes horrendous western climes; my reward for lasting out another too-long, too far north winter.  I need it like I need air.  Thank you God, for placing me right where I NEED to be. For knowing just what my soul would always need and providing it in abundance.  My whole life You have surrounded me with this slice of Your glorious creation.  A gift, for which I am truly thankful.

Psalms 121:1 - "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

Bring on THE SPRING!

Western Skies - Chris LeDoux
(This video is not mine.  The music is not mine.  None of the photography is mine)

These photos ARE mine.

Me, my dad, my sister circa 1977-ish

Me and Bob and Alice Dog 1994

Me, Bubbah, Dew Drop 2002

Bubbah and Dew Drop
Racetrack

Mina 2009

Mina's Fish 2011

Dew Drop & Newt 2012

Seymour Lake

Rock Creek

Fishing the Big Hole

I'd tell you where, but then I'd have to kill you.