Hello from the land of the occasional blue sky. With March over half gone, the sun peeks out a bit more these days. Mornings are still plenty crispy, slush frozen into whichever shape it was last spun into, hands stiff and frozen on the steering wheel until the heater has kicked in and begun blowing warm air on them. One gets good at driving with just a finger, a bump to the wheel now and then, hands pulled into coat sleeves.

We have begun marveling at our back yard lately. We think there is a good four feet of snow back there. Once, we had to step down about eighteen inches from the deck to the lawn. Now, we would have to climb about three feet up from the deck, just to get on the surface. Of the tangle of willows in the open space behind our house, only a few pitiful branches still poke out.

This is reported to be the eighth snowiest winter in recorded history, the fourth snowiest in the last fifty years. Gone are friendly porch-to-porch neighborly chats, since we no longer see when our neighbors emerge from their houses. Everyone is snug and private behind piles of snow taller than we are. And it is not hard to believe this was a winter for the record books- it has been a dark, snowy, windy winter. Even the diehards have hibernated a bit more than usual this year.

In anticipation of sunny days ahead, and a long shoulder season between ski resort closures and trail openings, I found myself in our local sports consignment store the other day. I have been threatening to purchase something that will allow winter trail access, and would you know it, a lady just my size had just dropped off her barely-used cross country skis and boots. The price was right, the size was right, and they were sitting there, winking at me, still so new yet... so i bought 'em. pretty much finished my chances of buying alpine skis yet this year, but I don't suppose I could have bought them for $80 anyway. I went home, a skinny-ski virgin, put them on, and began climbing the trail behind our house. After a mile or so, I began to get the hang of it, and four miles later, I found myself blazing a trail through untracked snow, perhaps fifteen hundred vertical feet higher. Then I had to turn around, and learn how to downhill. I had never freeheeled in my life, nor had I skied anything but those new short, shapey skis. They took me for quite a ride, as I careened through aspen stands, rock outcroppings, over fallen logs and frozen streams, completely unable to control speed and direction. Occasionally, the sun focused it's rays through an opening in the trees, and turned the soft, untracked snow to slush. Abruptly stopping on a slushy patch without having one's heels attached to anything can be damaging to a lot of one's parts, particularly one's ego, as one knows how comical she must look, face plant after face plant. It was a warm day, so as I climbed, layer after layer was shed until bare skin was exposed, soaking up a winter's worth of missed vitamin D.

It is a sport I am not finished with. I can't wait to get out again and apply what i have learned, just as soon as new skin grows under the scrapes on the forearms, that got stuck through the snow's crust countless times. In the meantime, my friend Mel has purchased all new equipment, so her heavily used old gear is available for borrowing. We are going skiing tomorrow night, she is determined that I shall use textbook form while learning, so I do not have to unlearn bad habits later on. It will be my forth time on a pair of skis.

Happy St. Paddy's day (even though it's almost over). I got pinched today, even though I wore green underwear.