Isn't it nice we're having weather? Or, bits about the emotional lives of boys and dogs

I woke up this morning and stumbled downstairs to let the dogs out (all THREE of them), whereupon I was greeted by the sight of two inches of snow on the ground. Folks, I am long past the time when I find the sight of delicately falling snowflakes even remotely charming. Goes out like a lamb, my ass. Not this year.

In other news, I've been reading "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys," and I'm about halfway through. I know I have a habit of beginning to talk about books when I'm only part of the way through them, but I'm an EFNP, so I can't stop myself.

The first requirement for me in a book about the problems of boys, and by extension, men, is that the authors not blame feminism, or the greater freedom of women generally, for those problems. Such simplistic argumentation is a sign of such impoverished thinking that I just won't waste my time. But in Raising Cain, the (male) authors, two psychologists who have spent years counseling boys, offer the closest thing I've read to a woman friendly analysis of the damage our culture does to boys. If you have a boy, teach a boy, know a boy, or used to be a boy, or just care about other people generally, this book is a must-read.

More on this when I've actually finished the book. Let's just say for now that it did nothing to alleviate my panic over the upcoming educational decisions we have to make for The Kid.

And in that vein, we'll be visiting a Montessori kindergarten program in the next few days. Last week was a school for "gifted" (whatever the hell that really means) children, where the kindergarten teacher was frank about the fact that the kindergarten is run like a first grade. Thanks, but no thanks. The Kid is arguably doing first grade level work in math, but is nowhere near ready for first grade reading. (Although he's demonstrated that he can sound out words, he still has not an iota of real interest in doing so.) This was a bummer, because they have a great phys ed program -- kids are allowed plenty of move-around time, to the point that they spend six Fridays every winter teaching the kids to ski. So, bummer. But I'm just not ready to subject the Kid -- already reluctant to go to school -- to a program where he's expected, out of the gate, to be doing work that's a year ahead of him. That's not the only reason, of course, but it's a big one.

In dog-related news, we have never found Alaska's humans. So it looks like we're her new humans. She and Thomas have negotiated a tenuous peace that occasionally breaks down over a rawhide chew or when she tries to steal his pink squeaky octopus, but they're mostly doing okay.
We took them to Montana last weekend, and the abundant space really helped them to get used to each other. On Monday, Mr. T IM'd me and said he wanted to keep her.

Perhaps realizing her newfound security, she promptly ate my silk duvet.

I can haz spring?

To all you people living in places where flowers and plants are actually growing: Pllllbttth!

I say that with the greatest of affection and respect. And envy.

Give me a moment while my fingers thaw

We've arrived. And it was a short trip, friends. Very short, compared to what we're used to doing. We left this afternoon and made it here before dinner.

Of course, it's a Montana winter and that means it takes the entire evening to warm the house up. The bedrooms have their own baseboard heating but the upstairs relies almost entirely on the wood stove. We got here 90 minutes ago and I'm still wearing my parka.

But I can actually type now, so that's a good sign.

Christmas Eve, Cabinet Mountains

Hope you're all having a grand time. I know I am.

Solstice Moonrise

There was a huge, beautiful moon rising on my drive through Northern Idaho Friday, but alas, there was no way to stop until it had shrunk significantly. So it's become the image I missed, now stored only in my own memory. I have many like that, and I treasure them, too, even as I grieve that I'm the only one to ever see them.

But I like the one I actually captured, too.

Sunday before Christmas

Cloudy, 32 degrees. There are about six inches of snow on the ground. Thomas and I took our walk this morning, crunching companionably through the snow crust together.

Snow tells a tale of the mountain that's hidden the rest of the year. It reveals the intensely, almost manically nomadic nature of deer, and records the passage of other animals. This morning we saw rabbit tracks interspersed with bobcat tracks, a drama written in the snow, but with no discernible ending. Did the bobcat get dinner? Or did the rabbit live another day?

Snow tells part of the tale, but doesn't promise more than that.

The dawning realization that I'm a complete pansy

I've written before of my disdain for the notion that flatlanders don't belong in the mountain west, but I'll say one thing: this place has a learning curve. Dress yourself and your dogs in orange during hunting season, or risk getting mistaken for a deer; be careful which roads you travel in the wintertime, because some are snowbound and isolated; be careful with fire in the summer, or you'll start one that destroys hundreds of acres.

Sometimes you learn through advice, other times you attend the school of hard knocks. On the Monday night before Thanksgiving, we were returning from Kalispell where we'd gone to purchase paint for the dining room. I was working on the laptop when we hit a patch of black ice, lost control of the vehicle, and went off the road into a ravine. The truck flipped and we landed, upright, straddling a creek.

Well.

Naturally, every time we have to drive in iffy conditions these days, we're a little rattled. And it seems like every time we drive anywhere, we're in iffy conditions.

"I feel like Wile E Coyote every time we get in the car," I remarked to Mr. T as we headed back to Oregon Monday in a snowstorm. But native Montanans and Idahoans seemed oblivious to the snow accumulating rapidly on the roadway. Trucks doing 75 or 80 miles per hour regularly zipped past us in the left lane. Weary and annoyed, we finally stopped at a gas station in Bonners Ferry, Idaho to check the forecast and see how long the snow was expected to last, and how much area the storm covered. Mr. T went in to chat with the attendant.

"Excuse me, do know what the forecast is?" he asked politely. The attendant looked up, peered out the window, and addressed Mr. T. "It's snowing," she observed astutely.

Mr. T blinked. "I understand that," he replied. "What I'd like to know is what it'll be doing later on."

"I expect it'll be cold for the rest of the day," she offered without a hint of levity and looked back down again.

"I'm not asking anymore," protested Mr. T as he flopped down in the driver's seat and started the car.

Back on the road, after the jillionth car zinged past us at an impossibly high speed in the near whiteout conditions, I finally discerned the cultural disconnect: To these folks, snowstorms were the norm, the usual, nothing out of the main. To me, it [used to be, anyway] an event preceded and succeeded by decent weather. But in Montana in January, it's the decent weather that's the event.

Seasonal affective disorder

This is perhaps the worst time of year for me to be writing a blog designed to feed my preoccupation with nature.

Any proper nature lover knows the world is just as alive in the winter as the other three seasons, and that you're a mere dilettante if you only love the outdoors when it's pleasant outside. But it's hard. My favorite peaks and trails are under ice or drifts of impassable snow at this time of year. The valley is like a wet rag, and the world often looks like nothing so much as an underexposed photograph.

It's hard to live in the Willamette Valley this time of year. Snow, already! Snow, so at least I can whish through powder under dark green evergreen boughs during the appallingly short daylight hours. Please, snow?

No. Well, at least I can drive an hour east to Mt. Hood if I want to do that.

But it's really the grave shortage of sunlight that wears and dulls my mind and spirit, sapping my energy and my will to seek a happy place outdoors. It will be much easier at the Ranch for Christmas, when all I have to do is walk out the front door. There's a path branching off from the road I've been meaning to explore. I'm told it winds all the way around the mountain. I'll ski it and see where it goes.

Then I'm getting the hell out of here and going to Florida in January.

I need a serotonin infusion. Plus, I need to do some bird photography in the Everglades.

Tragedy in southern Oregon

Last night, I opened the door and stepped out onto the deck. I wore a fleece, but no coat. I had socks on, but no shoes.

It was cold. The air was stiff, and a bit moist. And the cold was unmistakable. It enveloped me immediately, snaking up my fleece and stinging the bare skin on my back, biting the tips of my ears. It instantly soaked into my wool socks, stripping the warmth from my feet. I stayed only a few seconds before returning to the warmth of my bedroom.

But before I did, I breathed deeply and thought about James Kim, who didn’t have the option of returning to a warm space. Motivated to save his family, he pushed into the Siskiyou National Forest after nine days in his snowbound station wagon. I can readily understand why he did it. I think almost anything would be easier than watching your family die, even plunging into the frigid Oregon wilderness in shirtsleeves to seek help.

I can only wonder what Kati Kim was feeling. There could have been no question which one of them would go. She was the source of the nutrients keeping their girls alive. She was left with a task that was, in its own way, as monumental as the one her husband faced: to wait, caring for two children, and reassuring the one who was old enough to know something was very wrong. She had to grapple with what must have been monstrous fears, without the comfort of a sense of acting concretely to alleviate them.

In the end, James Kim made eight miles in the freezing air on nearly impossible terrain, having had little to eat for nine days. I’ve hiked – mostly on trails – in Southern Oregon. Well-fed, with the proper gear, and walking on a clear footpath, traversing this terrain under your own power is a strenuous task. Under the conditions James Kim faced, it’s an epic.

Sometimes the world is too hard.