For want of a new header, sanity may be lost

Some months from now it will be spring or summer, and this winter will be a memory, like childbirth. I know winters in my lifetime have been worse. In a box in a closet is a picture of snow plowed and shoveled from my drive, dwarfing my five feet and six inches attempting to reach the top of the heap. I was five foot six and forty years younger that winter.

I took Hamilton to church this morning. Two Sunday mornings I've declined. I made one of those decisions looking at my unplowed drive and road; the other we got up our hill to the county road. Now, I can drive this stuff, what with fifty five years’ practice, but the fishtail on the county road left me facing home again, and we came back down our road and skipped church.

Down into the valley, across the river, back up through pouring snow and slush my mental mantra this morning: it’s just thick rain! When I dropped him, Hamilton had instructions to tell Mike he owed me. Mike doesn't drive into and out of the valley of treachery to preach.

Yesterday was beautiful; we ran a lot of errands. Coming back from somewhere through the park I had to stop at the top of a blind hill to allow four deer to cross the road, single file. Their silly little rubber hooves make them look like prancers on ice and make me smile. Safely across I lifted my foot from the brake, and threw it down again. A dog burst from the wood, behind the deer. He stopped in the middle of the road and approached my car, all smiles and waggles. Saved! written all over his body.

His foolish little self was somewhere by my car, completely out of sight. I put the car in park, started up the emergency flashers, praying anyone cresting the other hill would see me. I called 911 and watched the dog simultaneously. A sturdy, biggish mix breed, more terrier, but with a flat heavy jowl, and so excited to see the car that would bail him out of the mistake of running after four deer.

I explained to the operator I would get the dog into my car and wait for a park ranger to come take him away. Then another car pulled up and stopped. The dog ran to it, and a man wrassled the dog into his car. I asked if it was his dog. No, but he was on the phone with a young lady on the trail down the hill. It was her dog, he would take it back to her. Then a ranger pulled up, put on emergency flashers, thank you God. Obviously enough people on the scene to rescue an enthusiastic young deer chaser from his mistake.

It’s March 2^nd. I don’t care if people I know have shoveled snow in April. Or May or June. Yesterday I saw the bulbs sprouting in the garden and a happy young dog chasing deer. Today the bulbs are covered in three inches of falling snow. If it melts again, I will lie on my belly and take a new header picture of leaves sprouting.

From the web. My young man had bigger feet.