I'm not going to talk about spring. It is simply way too early for such talk in the mountains. Our environmental palette remains subtle: white, greys, blues, white, greens so dark they appear black... white. Our feet adjust to snow, ice, slush, snow, ice, slush. Our crocuses continue their dormancy. We don't hold our breath.
Last month some friends and I spent a long holiday weekend volunteering for the park's fisher DNA study (read about similar work
here) assembling and re-bating old hair-collecting stations in Many Glacier, in hopes of detecting an animal who is hard to detect. This involved skiing into a backcountry cabin, getting pounded by wind and snow, and reveling in the rare pleasure of having the busiest part of the park all to ourselves. The trip reminded me of everything I love about winter--the smell of the cold caught in your hair, hands wrapped around a hot mug, fire crackling, fresh tracks on the snow, the way the landscape feels monochrome--and my mind returns to it on this misty, drizzly day.
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| Objects are as fuzzy as they appear |
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| Four feet |
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| Freshening the meat packet |
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| Harvesting hair |
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| Adding the love scent |
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| Sidewinder |
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| And not a shanty in sight |
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| Drip daggers |
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| See you in spring... |
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