Sidetracked Charley

Studio Window I live in a rural area in northern New Mexico at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We are surrounded by beauty and sometimes challenging canyons. We have no local television or radio or newspaper. For better or worse the internet and specifically Facebook has become our way of communicating about road closures, hazardous conditions on highways, school delays,  forest fire locations and evacuation orders, and even cell phone company collapses. And yesterday in the midst of one of our worst spring blizzards Facebook failed us. I quit Twitter because Trump took it over. And Google Plus quit us. Yesterday even cell phone service was iffy at best. Thankfully a friend stuck at the mouth of Coyote Canyon was able to reach me to ask to stay the night if the road crews got her and eight other cars pulled out of the drifts across the highway. It starts to seriously snow and all our snow tourists pack up and leave. And without Facebook there was no way to te...

Wintery Mix I really do not hate winter. I was a ski instructor for more winters than I am willing to admit to this morning. And I have lived in Colorado and New Mexico where winter provides much of the local income. But there are certain winter conditions I am not fond of. The older I get the more picky I get about snow. And since the record winter of 2006 I would just as soon the snow line be 250 feet above my house. I am not fond of the new favorite term on weather sites: Wintery Mix. It seems to encompass the absolute worst of winter - sleet, hail, freezing rain which it tops off with blowing snow. I hate the term blowing snow. Frankly, I think it is a cop out. What they mean is blizzard but they do not want to panic us because blizzard brings back the PTSD from the winter of 2006. I have a friend who suffered a crisis during that three day storm that delivered six feet of snow which didn't melt until May. I believe it finally just wore out from being blown around into ne...

Firewood half stacked My father used to tell tales of the blizzards of his childhood in Kansas City. Like all young children I rolled my eyes sure this was a lot like the fish that got away which continued to grow upon every telling. As an adult living in the intermountain west and spending 20 years of that time as a ski instructor I have been trapped by avalanches and snowed into mountain resorts and snow blinded on the trail heading to the lodge. But all those were transient events compared to the Blizzard of '06/'07 and the winter that followed. It started snowing I believe on the 29th of December. I went out and gathered up firewood from the unstacked pile just delivered. It had been a mild winter to that point and I was sure the wood I had would suffice but had gotten extra at the last minute. Snow storms in New Mexico seldom hang around but this one did. It was still snowing on New Year's Day. By then we had 6 feet of what skiers call Champagne powder if the wind...