A Winter Stream of Memory

As I recall, the long night of the solstice brought us on a wintry drive across the plains. Around 3AM, Jenean and I bajaed across row upon row of snow drift on Interstate 90 as we headed north for the holiday. Christmas was very pleasant with a crisp chill in the air and sparkly snow on the ground. As always, we loved spending time with our family and friends back home. On the return west, we spent a day exploring the snow-dusted pinnacles of the Badlands and racing the sunset in search of bison roaming the Black Hills. Around this time, it started to snow more consistently in the high country of Colorado, so I took to skiing most every weekend. I have toured the Front Range backcountry with Kris and Todd, and also made an outing to Rocky Mountain NP with Jenean. I have enjoyed skiing a new mountain at Eldora, and Jenean and I had a great day in deep powder at Wolf Creek. I have also been on the Nordic skis a fair amount, with good days in Pagosa, Steamboat, and on South Table in Golden. With new snow moving in along the foothills, a blazing red sunrise greeted me to the east on an early morning tour last week. Sledding has been good, but limited so far. Jenean and I dragged our sleds into James Peak Wilderness for some camping. On a cold day in January, Savvy the Gerbil passed away, and we hiked up South Table that evening to bury her body. Savvy and Saucy introduced me to a joyful part of life I had been missing, and this can never be taken away. We also had some moments of disequilibrium mid-winter as we waited to hear if Jenean would land an assistant professor position at St. Scholastica. We were excited by the possibility of returning to Duluth, of moving on to something new, of putting down some roots and buying a house. But at the same time, we were not quite sure if the timing was right, if we wanted to leave our community we have developed in Colorado, if we wanted to move away from the mountains. As it were, the position did not present itself - I was disappointed but also a little relieved. The world is wide and beautiful, and people that we love are spread all about, so I imagine that such tension, now introduced, will always be with us as we decide where to live. My job has progressed swimmingly this winter. I finally produced a video on financial literacy - featuring time travel, a dragon, and some cameos by my colleagues - that I had been working on (and off) for over a year. I moved to a new office and have a window facing the foothills, with some interesting landscape/construction directly outside. This has proven an entertaining distraction at times, such as the sub-contractor this week who insists on hooting and hollering most of the morning. All in all, I find my work exciting and very meaningful, and I am in a great environment. What else? Jenean and I saw a great show at Winter on the Rocks (Red Rocks), featuring one of our current favorites, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. I have been rather busy serving on various church committees - of all things. I am sponsor for a number of new church members and I am dutifully working on a number of projects for the Whole Earth Ministry (environmental stuff), including a weekend retreat Jenean and I will lead in the fall. I have been writing a fair amount, though not publishing much on the blog, as I have a number of incomplete strains of thought in need of more time. I have been reading a fair amount, too - Beyond Environmentalism; The Great Work; The River of Doubt; Hiking in Wrangell St. Elias National Park; Falling in Love with Mystery; One Jesus, Many Christs; and probably some others. Lately I have especially enjoyed coming home from work and spending the majority of my evening preparing dinner, eating with Jenean, then doing dishes and wiping down the sinks. It is relaxing to get down to life's more simple tasks after spending a busy day advising students and working on the computer. There was a grand celebration at our place for Jenean's Birthday XXX. I wore an x-ray. We received pedometers at work as part of the Health and Wellness theme, and I am closing in on 17,000 steps today. I woke up this morning at 5:30 to go for a nice trail run on the mesa. It is no longer pitch dark and starry when I head out for my morning workout, though that will change again this weekend. We visited Rick and Mariah in Steamboat this weekend and spent some time soaking in the Strawberry Park Hot Springs, idyllically set in a wooded alpine amphitheater. I have taken to sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and eggplant this winter, though I still eat a bowl of cereal most every night before bed. Speaking of which, it is about that time. There is rumor of a large upslope Front Range snow storm this weekend, so we will see what comes about. I suppose winter officially ends in about two weeks, but the ski season is shaping up to last through at least mid-May. Let it snow.