Christmas Eve

Last year, for Christmas Eve, I skied up Dry Canyon.  Thinking that it should be a tradition, I got the skis out of the shed on Monday and drove up the highway.  I skipped Dry Canyon this year and turned in at First Left Hand.  It was snowing hard and no one had tried the road for a week or so.  I put the Chev in 4WD and pushed up past the new bridge over Bowery Creek (see picture).  That was far enough for the truck.  The snow was sufficiently deep and sticky to make getting stuck a possibility, and I didn't want to spend the evening digging.

I put on the skis and started up the road.  It was kind of a slog.  It was snowing so hard that my glasses completely crusted over.  I couldn't see anything.  I took them off, but it wasn't much better.  My hands were cold.  I had just finished Angle of Repose and was feeling regretful about Oliver and Susan Ward.  Humbug.  It wasn't much of a Christmas Eve.  After ten minutes, I thought about turning around.  After 20, I'd had it:  Time to shake off the sleet and go home.

But, by then, I was at Five Mile and I decided to ski over to the old cabin across the creek.  When I got to the creek, I tried to side-step onto a fallen cottonwood tree.  I thought I might be able to cross the creek on the log without taking my skis off.  Bad idea.  It was too slippery and I fell on my butt.  On a rock.  I writhed around in the snow for a while until I could stand up again.  Then, I took off my skis and jumped the creek without them.

The cabin has been without doors and windows for several years, but I don't remember it being too badly vandalized before.  It is worse now.  Holes in the walls, and a lot of graffiti.  Filthy graffiti.  What is wrong with people?  Why can't we just keep it to ourselves?  Why do we have to go out in the woods and destroy something that has nothing to do with us?  What makes the idiocy and hatred something worth expressing?  Anyway, I can't say that my little detour exactly brightened my day.

I went back to my skis and started down the road.  The snow had stopped and for a moment the clouds lifted.  I watched them swirl in a ragged eddy around Noah's Ark.  The Vermillion Castle came into view and the settling dusk brightened to a low glow.  It was still.  I could see the Douglas fir trees, high up on the ridges of the Ark, cloaked in snow.  I heard the cheep of a chickadee.  I started skiing—the slog converted to half a glide.  Then more.  I found a bit of a rhythm.  I was floating—taking long downhill steps in soft snow.  Gravity had partially released me and I was walking on the moon.  Five minutes, ten, fifteen.  I was lost in the pleasure of it—tireless—kick, float, balance, kick, float, balance.

When I got to the truck, I threw the skis in, cleared away the new snow, and put it in drive.  The Chev wallowed down to the highway.  There was some slow traffic.  While I waited, I climbed out to break ice from the wipers.  It was miserable—cold, gray, sleeting—and the highway was covered with slippery sludge.  I couldn't have been happier.  I laughed.  I'd just been up the canyon.  Alone.  Skiing.