Always An Advsenture
Odds &ends BY AVALANCHE
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fter my ambitious (for me) hiking and climbing trip detailed over the last few columns, it took longer than anticipated to get back to normal. While the aches and pains improved a great deal over the first week or so, it took a couple more months to gain back the weight I lost during the long journey. The thought of being in the mountains again was always present, but the thought of hauling the requisite gear and food over many miles of rocky terrain deterred any action toward making it happen. A planned late-fall backpack hunting trip ended with a loaded-up pack which never made it out the door. Now that winter’s grip has loosened, I’ve finally been doing conditioning hikes again, albeit with a light pack. A newer, more comfortable backpack sounds nice. It might help offset a few years of aging, or at least provide some psychological protection from the inevitable creakiness from such outdoor pursuits.
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inter’s deep freeze has ended prematurely here in the mountains, with temperatures in the 50’s and even 60’s during the last week, something that usually doesn’t happen for at least another 12 | CROSSROADS | APRIL 2020
month. The neighborhood roads are much nicer than usual for this time of year, with the sometimes treacherous layer of ice gone. It’s a frozen, gravel surface in the morning, transitioning to a soggy mud-bog by early afternoon as the snow piles along the roadsides melt out. It helps to walk the dogs in the morning, while the surface is dry and solid, so the mutts can’t roll around in the gritty soup of afternoon, which they happily transfer into the house before we can wipe them down. Our yard is in a less-than-desirable state. There’s still a layer of ice over much of what was grass in the fall, with the heavily-trafficked areas thawed down to mud. It will be another month or more before we know if the long-buried grass survives, or needs to be replaced with sod this summer.
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he seasonal transition affects the human terrain as well. Our neighborhood was founded by a family back in the 1940’s and 1950’s as a guest ranch. Back then, young Wally, now in his early 90’s, stood at one end of the north pasture with a tall survey pole, and his dad drove a bulldozer toward him, scraping out a road in the process. After this
process was repeated a few times, a shallow trench was dug in the middle of the freshlyscraped roads, and some black plastic water line was laid into the trench for a water system. The pasture was subdivided into lots, and sold in the 1960’s for $900 apiece, to some of the ranch guests who wanted to have their own cabin for summer use. Some of that early infrastructure is still in use today; only two homes are seasonally occupied now, with the rest filled with working families. The last vacant lot was sold about 10 years ago for the same price as in the 60’s… with a couple of zeros at the right end of the number. Wally and his wife are moving away after living here for most of 70 years. Health concerns have them headed to lower elevation to be near their children and grandchildren. They’ll be missed here, as well as their stories and history lessons about life in this valley more than half-a-century ago, a less-crowded, simpler time. On the brighter side, three families here have had new babies born this winter, providing some brand-new fresh faces, and putting smiles on their sleep-deprived parents’ faces. Just as winter turns to spring, the new generation arrives, as the old moves on.
