Sun, Crunch and Sugar

The sun shone today for the first time in, seemingly, forever. Icicles on the edge of the metal roof were slowly melting. Time to go snowshoeing before the crust turned to slush. Instead of taking the driveway, I decided to cut through the meadow behind the house, humping up the first of the hills. My legs were tired from my workout at the gym yesterday, but the sun felt good on my back. I climbed slowly, from fatigue, the incline of the hill, and the crunchy snow.

This was something of a learning day. On Thursday, I went out at a fairly fast clip through the light, fresh snow. By the time I got home, I felt a bit shaky, and it wasn't from the effort of the exercise. In late July, surgery left me an instant Type 1 diabetic, and I'm still learning about how diet and exercise affect me. Thurday's exercise - and not enough food - left me with a blood sugar level of 57.0 mg/DL, below my hypoglycemic parameter of 70. A quick glass of apple juice, followed by a slice of no-sugar-added apple pie with sugar-free ice cream, got me back up. Determined not to let that happen today, I had 1/2 a whole wheat bagel with salmon before going out today, and age a Glucerna snack bar 20 minutes into my walk. My blood sugar when I got back was 237 mg/DL - 50 points higher than I'd like it, but not hypoglycemic. Getting this right is going to take some time.

Snowshoeing Redux

Overcast, but warm today. The snow has been melting, and plowing the driveway created some icy versions of Jersey barriers, that won't melt off until sometime in spring. I decided to go snowshoeing, this time with poles - much faster, better balance, and more of an upper-body workout. No surprise, since I did a lot of cross country skiing in Wyoming. What did surprise me was a line of moose tracks crossing the driveway, about 150 yards from the house. We've seen what we thought were moose tracks in soft dirt, but nothing with as clear an impression as these - about five-and-a-half inches long, with small impressions of dew claws. After I finished my mile-and-a-half loop, I brought out my camera to take this shot. Still waiting to see a moose in the flesh on our place.

First Snowshoeing Day of the Season

The newspaper says we’ve gotten more than 32” of snow so far this brief winter. Didn’t seem that much until I got to the second switchback of our half-mile-long driveway, and the drifts proved too much for my ATV-mounted snowplow. The driveway goes up to the site where we hope to build a home someday. We’re now living in Karen’s childhood home, not far from the county road, and plowing that section of the driveway was quick and easy. Getting half of the long driveway plowed made it easier for the first day of snowshoeing in two years. Last winter was so mild, we didn’t strap on the shoes once. But, we did on Tuesday. Snowshoes, check. Gaiters, check. Poles, no (until I got some this morning at Cabela’s). Then it was up the driveway, still with about an inch over the hard-packed gravel and dirt.

The lower meadow was covered with the tracks of wild turkeys. We stopped by a large apple tree at the start of the first switchback to drop pieces of stale bread for the birds. Next, I guess, will be a big box of Honey Nut Cheerios I can’t eat now that I’m diabetic. Past the switchback, the snow alongside the driveway is pockmarked with the hoof prints of the deer that come down to graze near our house in the early mornings and evenings. At the second switchback, we keep going straight, past the ruin of Mr. Cable’s log barn. Years ago, the roof caved in, and the interior is now home to an enormous elderberry bush, which in the summer produces great bunches of purple berries, food for the magpies and shelter for the hummingbirds. We make our way down to the lower meadow, ringed on the south and east by more apple trees, and then along the now-frozen spring, which had provided water to the Cables. On past our small aspen grove, then the hundred-yard site of summer’s red peonies, to the slope leading up the backside of the home site hill. Two autumns ago, I’d transplanted a small fir tree from dead-center on the trail we’d just traveled, to a clearing just east of the trail. Every day, when we’d walk the trail, I’d look over to the little fir, and say “hello” to it. But not on this trip. The deer had nibbled away half of each branch. It looked pathetic. Still, I knew that, since the deer had not eaten the top, it would continue to grow. Sometimes I think of the deer as little more than big-eyed vermin.

We slogged up the long drag of a hill, pausing once to rest for a few seconds, wishing we’d had snowshoeing poles. Up through our putative building site overlooking the slope down to the old house. Back on the unplowed section of driveway, we could soon see Mount Spokane to the north, heavy with snow. Shortly after we moved here, we put a bench near the house site from which we could see Mount Spokane, changing with the seasons and conditions of light. From there, we can see most of the valley west of the county road, the red barns and white fences, and cattle grazing spring through fall. Sound echoes up the hillside, and we can hear our neighbors plowing fields or plowing snow, each in its own season. Logging trucks chugging up the county road; chainsaws working overtime; children playing in their yards; stock cars at distant Stateline Speedway; the train moving down the tracks at Otis Orchards.

Then, all downhill, past more transplanted firs – these unmolested by the deer. The breadcrumbs at the first switchback is gone, the turkeys scattered. Pete, our long-haired black cat comes to greet us. Here comes Tigger, the small middle-aged tabby wearing his perpetual sneer, the result of losing an upper fang to a carelessly swung door in his youth. They escort us back to the house. The first day of the snowshoeing season is done.