A hint of winter scented the air. That got my attention. The dogs and I were outside the clinic, taking care of matters. The dogs probably noticed it before me, but I don't know what it meant to them, cause they just carried on. It meant a lot to me.
Each year the experts try to convince me that winter has something to do with the circuit of the sun around the earth (or was that the other way around?) or some date on a calendar. But they must be looking at things in a different way. For me...well I go out and sniff the air. That generally tells me when winter is at hand.
A day earlier, those cirrus clouds we call mare's tails went scudding by. That would portend a change in the weather, usually rain if you must know. And in California, rain almost always means winter. Standing there, waiting for dog requirements to finish, I noted the gunmetal ceiling overhead, and I smelled the cool damp. Definitely, rain coming. And I took my change of clothing out of the car and stashed them in the clinic, so I would not have to go outside to do it after the precipitation began. Clever me.
I don't usually need a change of clothing after work, but we were leaving for Wyoming when the day elapsed, and we both dressed for cold. The Weather Channel suggested it would be snowing on Donner Summit when we were planning on passing through, and I've tried that before on a Friday night, so I also packed emergency rations, sleeping bags, and the other survival necessities, just in case the short drive turned into an ordeal.
California doesn't cope well with weather. When things get hairy, parts of it tend to fall off. Californians do worse. Three quarters of an inch of snow on the interstate leading up to Donner sends Californians into panic. Any more than that, and you'd think the world had come to its end. The game of bumper cars soon follows. Cal-Trans puts on the chain restrictions to slow folks down for those crashes, but tire chains do not make people smarter, and neither does buying a four wheel drive SUV.
So after wasting too much awhile at the first chain control station, and then fidgeting for an hour at the second, we parked in our lanes in the middle of nowhere-in-particular, waiting while the wreckers and ambulance passed us on the shoulder and disappeared ahead. Another hour. And then they let us go forward.
We proceeded cautiously, trying to anticipate which Californians would do something fundamentally wrong on the slippery snow, and thus put their rides sideways in front of us. I managed to miss those who did. Meanwhile we enjoyed the snowfall, and the flocked trees, and the scent of winter.
Our boots crunched on snow and ice in the motel parking lot in Idaho on Sunday morning. The locks on the cover that hides the bed of the truck were frozen into obstinacy, and the windshield defroster faced a daunting task. Those new deerskin gloves I bought just for driving came in handy, and they smelled real good. When you need four wheel drive just to get out of a parking lot, that is also a hint of winter.
My nose finally convinced me that winter was truly at hand as we stood atop that snowy ridge late Monday afternoon, binoculars dancing over the surrounding mountainsides seeking the elusive elk. The fire blazed away beside me, turning the wood we pruned from a dead snag into welcome warmth, and sending sweet smoke up to me. Campfire in the snow. Yep...winter has arrived.
The thermometer read minus 23 at Wednesday dawn, and the intense blue of the sky bewildered my senses. Ground fog hovered by the base of the mountains, and half a foot of fresh snow as fine as volcanic ash cloaked my truck. But it was the light that captured me. I remembered the light from those below zero days when I was young. It was so intense and so pure that even as a naive waif I recognized the wonder of it. And it was so good to experience it again.
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