the snowy day

snow on tent

on the 18th of october i woke up to snow in my campsite. it was not a surprise to me, because a) it had been snowing on and off the entire previous day and b) i had heard the forecast.

i needed to go home and get some cold weather gear because although i had some, when i'd left the house it was late summer and i had needed to bring warm weather clothes and so didn't have all the cold weather stuff i would have liked.

plus that ONE PAIR OF  jeans i own that fits well over tights, midweight longjohns and fleece longjohns really, really needed to be laundered.

and i needed to buy groceries.

i could have done it saturday, and i could have done it monday, but why NOT do it on the most cold miserable day, if i'm going to leave camp for a few hours?

so i made a bottle of tea and a bowl of oatmeal in the leisurely way you can if you know you're not going to have to sit out all day and i gathered up the laundry, warm weather clothes i wasn't going to be needing anymore, and i got in my boat.

if was a pretty paddle, with a little bit of sunshine breaking out.

i got home, had some food, did some laundry, packed some things.

camp with snow 

i watched the afternoon storms roll in. snow and snow, wind and more wind, grey, heavy skies.

and those jeans were taking forever to dry. sometimes you can wear them damp, but you really shouldn't when you are out in the cold and you depend on them to keep you warm.

so waiting.

and at some point, jeans not dry yet (soon!) i looked at a clock and realized that if i left the house NOW (nevermind jeans or gathering the things i had packed) i was arriving back at the boat landing around 4:30 in the afternoon.

view from camp. pretty.

that maybe does not sound very late to you, but up there, even before the clocks changed, even in the middle of october, 4:30 was the time that the sun disappeared behind the mountain and the long cold twilight of the day began.

and i looked at the snow, and the wind, and the clock, and the fact that my jeans STILL weren't out of the dryer and i decided to sleep indoors for a night.

paddle out