Not So Much Spring

Usually, by mid-April, the snow has receded from the narrow valley in which my cabin is located and I am able to drive in and see how everything has overwintered.  Yesterday, that girl, her sister, and I drove up to the cabin to do just that.

Big news: We did not experience a normal winter.

Something close to three feet of dense, crusty snow remains spread across most of the valley like a hard shell.  The road in is still no more than a narrow trail cut between snowbanks.  Parts of the road have degraded into full-blown mud bogs.  All along the creek, the once upright willows have been squashed utterly flat by winter’s inordinately heavy snows.

Not terribly far from the cabin, I managed to find a wide enough spot in the road to park.  The girls pulled heavy boots onto their feet and we crabbed across the surface of the snow to reach the cabin.  Each of us crashed through the snow at various points—often finding ourselves buried nearly waist deep.

We found the cabin still held in snow—looking like a precious stone fixed in place by a heavy white setting.

We poked around.  The cabin had fared well.

After leaving the cabin, we drove into Lincoln.  There, we stopped at Lambkin’s for a Bloody Mary.  I chatted about the snow and our long winter with the woman tending the bar as she scuttled about mixing the drinks.

Long, this one.

When I asked her how deep the snow was in Lincoln at heart of winter, she said: “Deep enough that we had a few roofs collapse under the weight.”

We drove home by way of Stemple Pass.

As we ascended in elevation, we encountered cabins and homes along the road with several feet of snow still remaining on their roofs.   I spotted one log cabin with an addition that had experienced a total roof collapse.  Every mountainside supported at least one temporary cascade of snowmelt crashing down onto the roadway.

Not so much spring just yet.

-- Mitchell Hegman