The Christmas Diaries, Part 2

Last year's raspberries casting their late afternoon shadows on the snow

Arrival...Sunday, December 18th

We did our typical trying-to-get-somewhere early morning wake-up at the motel, checked in with each other -- “Are you going back to sleep?  Me neither. Let’s go.” -- and were on the road by 5 AM.  We gassed up at Circle K, got coffees, and dug into our friend Geri’s Christmas present of zucchini bread before we’d hit I-25 North.  In the pre-dawn we congratulated ourselves on missing the blizzard that was coming through this area this evening, a blizzard that would, in fact, eventually close Raton Pass, our passage into Colorado.  At first light you could see the snow-chalked ground below the pinon pines and juniper, the white horizontal striping of the mesa ledges.  With some Windham Hill Christmas music collections playing, we watched it get light, enchanted with the snowy scene.  Our excitement mounted with every passing mile.

After a quick stop at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Woodland Park, The May Flower, we went on to Florissant, turned north, and soon hit dirt roads.  They were a bit snow-packed in places, so it was a slow trip in, but beautiful.  It felt like we’d been away for a few days instead of 10 weeks.  When we’d left in early October our neighbor had been fly fishing on the lake below the cabin; now they were ice fishing (and had a beautiful big rainbow trout to show for it) and ice skating through the powder that had fallen over the frozen lake.  

It was all good until we hit our driveway, much of it covered in nearly a foot of snow.  Someone, thank goodness, had driven up fairly recently, so we had their tracks to help navigate the steep, near quarter mile to the cabin.  We made a few runs at it, having to back up a time or two to get further along the unplowed drive.  When the cabin was in sight we decided to leave the car for a bit and hike on up through the snow, anxious to make sure the cabin was alright and that we had power and heat and no frozen pipes.  It proved to be in fine and welcoming shape, relatively warm inside (mid-50’s) thanks in part to the low angle of the sun flooding the cabin with light and the propane heater set to low just to keep the cabin, and its pipes, safe.  

It was great to arrive at a cabin that was fully ready to be occupied.  Both last Christmas and last summer we had either no, or not enough, furniture and there was much moving in and organizing to do.  This time it was turn-key ready, or as turn-key as a cabin like this can be.  We got all the power on, went down in the crawl space and turned on the well pump, checked for leaks, and got a fire going in the wood-burning stove.  My husband went back down the hill and finally managed to get the car up the drive (next time the chains will be put on before trying), and unloaded.  There was a ton of stuff to put away, fire-wood to be hauled up, and totes and duffles to be stowed, but we found time to sit for a short time on the front deck, a bit of a heat trap, where it was, oddly, sweater weather.  It was a mild day with a high in the low 40’s, and we knew the next day would be different, with a predicted high in the 20’s and a few inches of snow.  Perfect!

After an early dinner of some chili I’d made in Tucson and brought up in our cooler, we were in bed by 8 PM -- not so surprising when it gets dark at 5 PM -- and we slept the deep sleep of arriving home after a 900 mile journey.