Yesterday I went
walking. Or more accurately, wading. The snow was a little deep, and
I wasn't using skis. People who were flashed merrily past, whooping
and yelping. As I crossed a groomed trail, an older couple stopped to
stare.
“Look, a walker!”
said the husband, in much the same way Sir Edmund Hillary might have
said, “Look, a yeti!' “Hello! Snow not too deep yet?”
“Oh no,” I said.
“I like it.” And I waded away from the trail, into the pines,
where a red-breasted nuthatch was the only caller, and a thousand
little animal tracks zigzagged away through the trees.
Strange what you'll
do when it counts as fun. For the last few months, until resigning
just before Christmas, I worked as a newspaper carrier for the local
rag. Not your stereotypical Johnny-the-Paperboy route, but the kind
of second job that adults take when they want to eat and pay the
rent. Every morning, seven days a week, I got up at 2 AM (or just
stayed up all night drinking coffee until 2) and then went to the
printing garage, picked up several hundred papers, and spent the next
several hours distributing them. Vast stretches of time were spent
slogging through the snow and it was not, I assure you, a pleasure at
all. Perhaps because, instead of elk and great gray owls, the only
wildlife I encountered in the wee hours of Missoula were cops and
drunk college kids.
Fall and winter are
the dark side of sexy seasonal jobs in beautiful places.
Anyway, in
mid-December I left the paper behind forever and flew home to
Cincinnati to spend Christmas with the family. It was a great visit.
How civilized to sleep past 2 in the morning! To loll in the hot tub
sipping brandy while the snow patters on your head! Or if you're my
dad, to sit in the hot tub and bird-watch.
On the eve of
Christmas Eve, my parents and I went on a livelier bird-watching
expedition to a local state park. Funding for parks has been slashed
in Ohio, and the effects on this one were striking. Buildings stood
abandoned on the edge of the woods, grass was growing up through the
asphalt, and many pull-ins and parking lots had been reclaimed by
shrubs and trees. It was something like a miniature American
Chernobyl. We passed a rusty, abandoned water tower and hiked along
the edge of an overgrown field. A flock of sandhill cranes wheeled
overhead, croaking their weird and beautiful song.
After the holidays I
said goodbye to my family and flew back. The plane, approaching
Missoula, stooped low to come up the valley between the mountain
ranges. Looking out the window, I recognized the landmarks of home:
Lee Metcalf, where we'd gone swimming in the summer; the abandoned
ski resort off I-93, its runs untracked and inviting; the Bitterroots
blue with frost; the Clark Fork slicing through town.
For a moment I
wished I could keep flying, not like a crane but north, chasing
winter over the mountains.
