Testing for posting fix.

I’ve been dreaming of snow and mountains since summer.  Last week I indulged that dream by driving to Wolf Creek ski mountain, near Pagosa Springs, CO, then to Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico. I began the new year in fresh powder at Wolf Creek, where I spent three days, and finished with a day and a half at Taos.  After 4.5 days of frenetic skiing, I was physically spent and very happy about it.

Below is a montage of photos taken along the mountain roads.  I took a few videos while skiing at Taos, which I’ll share later (I have none of Wolf Creek – the battery was dead when I tried to use it my last day there).

This was something of a sentimental excursion.  I learned to ski at Wolf Creek, in March of 2015, but had less than two days there.  I next skied Taos, in December, 2015, but the mountain being so steep (considered one of the most difficult in North America) and my skills being so paltry, there were few runs I could enjoy without difficulty; I vowed to return often to gauge my progress.

The San Juan mountains around Wolf Creek were in full winter dress.  Forty inches of fresh snow fell while I was there, so mountains, trees and meadows were blanketed in pristine snow.  Driving the pass – 23 uphill miles from my hotel in Pagosa Springs – was tricky, but four-wheel-drive and new snow tires got me through even the worst of it.

Wolf Creek is famous for its powder and for an abundance of opportunities to through ski glades of trees.  I spent some time on named trails, but found that off-piste skiing through trees in deep powder to be such a delight that I spent most of my time doing just that.  Snow and wind cloaked the tops of most runs in ‘flat light.’  The top of the largest lift, Treasure Stoke, was so obscure that the first 200-300 yards had to be skied with virtually zero visibility.  I found this exhilarating.

After my third day at Wolf Creek, I drove three hours to Taos.  The red rock cliffs near Chama were beautiful in snow, but the most glorious stretch was highway 64 through the southern San Juan mountains of northern New Mexico.  This was also the most treacherous, as the road is not well maintained in winter and deep fresh snow had fallen recently.  For more than 30 miles, from the western foothills all the way to the eastern descent into the high desert, I saw not a single other vehicle.  From there, the Sangre de Cristo mountains – the range most dear to me – loomed closer and closer, rising sharply from the desert floor. 

I spent the first evening wandering the historic Taos plaza – a tourist trap, but still a treat – and enjoying New Mexican green chile stew and enchiladas wrapped in hand-made blue corn tortillas at the old Alley Cantina, a local favorite.  Fuel for the mountain…

Taos Ski Valley was as challenging as before.  It is said that its green runs are as difficult as blue runs anywhere else, blues as difficult as blacks, and so forth.  Compared to other mountains I’ve skied, this certainly held true.  However, I was pleased to find that I could ski all the blue runs there, with only one – the devilish Firlefanz – really challenging my abilities.

Is it too much too much to ask of our congressional representatives that they know the most basic facts about the things they condemn?

It seems so for Sheila Jackson Lee, for 21 years the representative for the 18^th congressional district (Houston).  She seems ignorant of the fact that long guns are used in a very small percentage of crimes, and that automatic rifles are used in far fewer still.  Automatic weapons like the AK-47 are difficult and expensive to acquire.  Few Americans own one.  They are an almost inconsequential factor in crimes committed with guns.

I’ve become sadly accustomed to gun opponents’ ignorance of gun types, ofstatistics about guns used in crimes, and even of the basic operating principles of guns, but statements as foolish as this further convince me that federal lawmakers are all too often woefully unqualified to craft or pass laws which at the least will be ineffective and, at the worst, may burden further our civil liberties.

As the heat of another Texas summer deepens and prolongs – now almost six months without cease – I turn each year, for an emotional respite, to reading books about polar exploration and natural history.  In the last few days I’ve returned to “Arctic Dreams” by Barry Lopez, now 30 years since its first release.  I believe it stands at the pinnacle of achievement in the literature of American natural history.  I first read it in 1988, when it provided good company during a six-month stint on a ship sailing between Central and South American ports.  Reading it now, I feel as if I’ve been reunited with an old friend.

Lopez selects a single topic for each chapter in the book: marine life; Inuit culture; land and perception; etc.  Chapter 8, a synopsis of European exploration of arctic regions, concludes with a passage that takes my breath away, and which rewards with each re-reading:

“I think we can hardly reconstruct the terror of it, the single-minded belief in something beyond the self.  Davis [John Davis, English mariner and arctic explorer] wrote of the wild coasts he surveyed that he believed God had made no land that was not amenable, that there were no wastelands.

“Walking along the beach, remembering Brendan’s deference and Parry’s and Davis’s voyages, I could only think what exquisite moments these must have been.  Inescapable hardship transcended by a desire for spiritual elevation, or the desire to understand, to comprehend what lay in darkness.  I thought of some of the men at Winter Harbor with Parry.  What dreams there must have been that were never written down, that did not make that journey south with Parry in the coach, but remained in the heart.  The kind of dreams that give a whole life its bearing, what a person intends it should be, having seen those coasts.”

Does your father enjoy sport shooting, hunting, or just owning guns as a personal pleasure?  If so, consider giving him a gift that will please him and will flaunt the recent calls for “gun control” measures.  Here are a few good ideas.  Flaunt your liberties and make your dad happy – what could be better?