A Little Surprise

In the ski town of Brian Head, Utah, there are two hotels:  The Grand Lodge and the Cedar Breaks Lodge.  They are near each other, just up the road, I don't know, a tenth of a mile?  Between them there is a dense copse of aspen and subalpine fir.  And I mean dense.  A thicket.  You can't even see into the woods.  Yesterday EDO and I were walking between the two hotels.  (We were on the road, defending ourselves on the shoulder, because, this being America, there is no way to walk between motels—even if you can see one from the other.  If you don't want to be run over, you'd better drive.)  As we went, I noticed that the thicket wasn't quite as thick.  Pretty soon I could see a little opening, a path or an old road going up into the woods.  I told EDO that we should try the "short-cut."  She treated my suggestion with derision.  She seems to be under the impression that my "short-cuts" can sometimes turn into something more properly termed a "death-march."  In any case, we went up into the suddenly brightening woods.  We popped out into a little meadow.  With a pond.  And ducks.  There between the hotels.  In the woods.  Invisible from the road.  Invisible from the lodge.  Surrounded by aspen.  And grass.  A little pothole.  A little surprise.  The kind of thing that sort of makes my day.