First Snow - We Got It All Right

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We had plenty of advanced warning all right. Red e-mailed and asked us what we thought of the snow storm warning - ??? Well, it hit. Prior to this morning, we had one odd afternoon several weeks ago where snowflakes fell lightly in a half-hearted manner and died before hitting the ground.

Last night brought the first of this year's real snow, followed by many low and long murmurs of rolling thunder. We are still not used to snow being chaperoned by thunder but it seems common place out here. I was already in bed and counted patiently to 50 last night before the first long growl of rolling thunder ceased.
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This morning, we awoke to the scene above, well not quite. We awoke to a pristine mantle of snow but by the time I got the camera out fifteen minutes later, Brou and Daisy had already embossed the landscape irrevocably once they remembered that this white stuff was delightful. Daisy was the least inclined to try it and this probably hearkened back to her previous life of solo confinement outside. When Mark tried to get her to join Brou, she politely declined, turned tail immediately and went back to her bed. After some coaxing, she finally discovered the joys of running free in the snow with Brou and cavorting in their usual summer-long manner. It feels wonderful to see her slowly shedding some of her over-shadowing memories.
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The above photo was taken around lunch time. The clouds had become sparse and a generous amount of clear blue sky was reigning above them but the clouds were moving in noticeably fast fashion - you didn't have to find a fixed point and wait patiently to discern which direction they were moving today.
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Barely ten minutes later, I snapped this photo. Any hint of the blue sky had disappeared. The far juts of mesas were rapidly disappearing and the snow began to fall lavishly once more. Nature was not done with her venting by any means. By the time it was all done, we had picked up about four inches of snow.
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About an hour later, I took this photo. Sporadic patches of blue skies had returned and we sensed that the heaviest assault had passed. The temperatures climbed a little, enough for the accumulated snow to start melting and running off the roof of the Rat in a frequent and steady "tap, tap, tap". Not a single vehicle passed by to disturb the wide, white band of snow which had been the road just yesterday. This whiteness without blemish and the silence was a heady elixir of pure peacefulness.

Tonight it's going to be a few tasty chicken club sandwiches on broiler-toasted French bread with real live French fries after my Thanksgiving folly. That's the thing about living out here without the never-ending onslaught of media hype; I thought that TG was still at least a week or more away and didn't put a turkey down on last week's shopping list. We certainly had stuffing out the wazoo though. If you are going to live this far out and have so few supply runs, you need to plan efficiently for them. Well, we are obviously still working on that aspect. Don't want to hear any smug snickering either - try a supply run only twice a month with absolutely NO little cheat stops at the local quick mart - I would dare you to try it in fact. It might tell you things about yourself that you didn't know or care to acknowledge.
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