Wednesday we wake in a cloud to walk in a pogonip which feels way colder than the fifteen degrees the thermometers say…

…next day nearly forty before 8:30 on the north side of the house…a good day to fill the tank.  We puzzle out the pumphouse and visit the gate to collect a package [in winter we leave a box there as deliverers can’t make it to the house].

…and the sky was not cloudy all day [over seventy in my unheated upstairs studio by three].

Day the next, Friday, the cloud’s back, rising and falling; crystals on the grasses, clear skies to the north…roads in the valley are treacherous sheets of ice, but walking a few hundred feet up Mary Ann’s hill we can see the frost’s edge ends higher up…

Late afternoon it recedes, leaving us mud and ice together, a treacherous combo of gumbo for our bright muddy walk…

…for packages; one for L. and one from us a seventieth birthday gift for Jim…seventieth!  Whoa.

He’s a grandfather, too…but we don’t stay around for the party.

Saturday’s sunny, but up the creek it’s solid ice everywhere we’d previously stepped.  Warm, though, so when Dean and Sibylla drive down for a last Skype to Bed-Stuy at midday the driveway’s a sea of of mud, but no matter…

Mud in front; lunch out back…

Last day, packing and a bit diminished from celebratory festivities Saturday night we nonetheless struggle a final time to the Lone Pine, easier now with less snow on the trail;

After a last sojourn on the deck the clouds move in and the loading gets serious…

We’ll be out of here tomorrow, a hey hey…watch for it!

 

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