Twilight stroll
In January the sun sets pretty early around here -- it's pitch black by 5 p.m. but twilight actually starts around 3 p.m. I was back from Upper Joffre, had had a snack, and realized I still had a half hour or so before it was dark. I grabbed my cross country skis and a headlamp and set out again, though the sunshine from earlier in the day had be substituted by thick snow. The trail was downhill slightly, across a creek, then uphill a bit. Soon the forest cleared and I was on the lake. Skiing across a lake is an odd experience, even when you know that it is covered by six feet of snow. And even though it is covered by that much snow, the coverage is not even, and as I cross the lake I could see that there was a dark splotch ahead -- open water.