Apology

The snow.  When I finally dragged my sorry bones to the barn this morning, I made a conscious choice not to take the camera.  You can’t take a camera everywhere, darn it.  And it was twenty degrees, and there’s all that climbing.  Anyway, I just didn’t do it.  So, of course, once I got there and parked in Jim’s plowed driveway next door (suddenly, I have no power steering???) and slogged over to the gate – I have to hook my arms around the top rail because the frost is so—chillingly sticky that I can’t get it off my gloves if I touch it and so freeze forever afterwards.  I am not really awake here.  Starting over with the sentence: when I got there and climbed the gate, I found myself looking down a snowy three hundred foot driveway that was absolutely on fire.

Remember how I told you about the jewel-toned snow?  Well, this was it.  There was a bit of a thaw yesterday, enough to freeze the crust of the snow all over again.  And the sun, not just over the mountain, but a little further up than that and shining clearly from a patch of pure blue, sent light slanting across the snow crystals just so.  The whole driveway was ablaze with lazer points of pure color.  I didn’t even stop to admire it (how long can you afford to hold still and look at anything?) because I wanted to hurry and feed the starving ones and then skeedaddle home for the camera.  But of course clouds shift, and light angles change and by the time I left, it was just plain old sparkle again – and even that was fading.  So I’m sorry.  I wanted to show it to you.