This is F#@$*#g Beautiful!

Pictured below is a landscape caught at something near -10 degrees.  I snapped the photographs while snowshoeing with my friend, Oonie, on Sunday morning.  We started at the very top of MacDonald pass and then tramped down the lee side of the Rocky Mountains through the snow—often as deep as four feet.

Beautiful!  No other word required…though Oonie and I often yelled out things such as: “This is f_ _ _ _ _g bee-eew-tee-ful!”  Well…we pretty much kept repeating just that one thing.

Sometimes, we stopped and stood still in forested places that were so quiet you could hear your own imagination connecting the dots.  We passed through a place where a forest fire tore through the woods leaving only the stark and perfectly rigid uprights of lodgepole pines.  The surreal image and the uniformity of the blackened trees seemed almost computer generated and was transfixing.

We stared directly at the sun.

 

I ate a scoop of snow that stung my tongue with deep chill and then fell once (face-first) into the snow.

Winter.  Just f_ _ _ _ _g beautiful!

Ask Oonie, she’ll tell ya.

--Mitchell Hegman