It's Almost Over

I'm talking about the month of January. Now to get through February... Every year it gets harder as I age. I remember the wonderful snow and ice activities of my youth. My glory days remain clearly. So do the days of misadventure.

Going way back in years, probably sometime when I was around age 10 to 14,  I can still see bloody ice from when I fell and gashed my chin open. I always loved to be the end skater of about six or seven other skaters who formed the whip because of the speed of the crack the whip game, being at the end was exciting. I had lost the grip of the person ahead of me and everyone was in total awe to see such a blood puddle before they helped me walk home. My mother used clean snow made into a pack to help the flow and then came the iodine and a bandage. I cannot even see a scar today.

My neighborhood friends, both guys and girls including me, used to sleigh down a kid-made downhill trail on a very steep hill through the woods. This secret sledding place was about a mile up the road from where we lived. We had built lift off humps throughout the trail with snow-covered logs creating drop offs so that when you came to one you went airborne and then landed back down on the trail. The idea was not to fall off, get your wind knocked out, or crash into the trees on the side of the trail. WOW! Our parents never knew about this! It really took guts to go down that hill.

One year, sometime in the 70's when the snow was deep, the air was clear and the sun was out, I saddled up my horse and daughter's pony and we went for a ride on old narrow snow-covered roads in the backwoods. I had misjudged the depth of the drifts and my horse plunged through with the pony following. After many breaks to rest, I thought we were doomed. The end of this story is that my horse got us through, with much urging, breaking the path for the pony and rider behind. Whew! That was a close one.

Another story that comes to mind is when the Mister and I were snowmobiling with a group of others and, although we were well dressed for a long ride, I became very chilled and it's a good thing we got home in time for him to undress me from the suit and to cover me up with warm blankets because, I know now, that hypothermia was definitely beginning. It got to the point when we were heading home that I wanted to sleep on the back of the machine I was so cold.

No personal photographs to go with this today. There are none but for the ones in my mind. They are very real - still. But of course, I made a photomanipulation painting of cracking the whip.

End of stories today. February is just around the corner and then Mother Nature will continue her march through the seasons, as usual.