A Perfect Spring Weekend

After a Donald Maass workshop on Saturday (more on that later), I headed up to Lake Louise for a family holiday. The weather is amazing – hot, perfectly clear sky, and a really high avalanche risk as the spring melt begins.

This morning: snowshoeing at Bow Summit, on the glacier parkway, just past Bow Lake and Bow Glacier, the headwaters of the Bow River, I think.

I’d forgotten the great joy of spring skiing – being on snow in warm, warm air. We snowshoeed across a meadow and then into the trees. Later I rested, stretched out in the sun, on my jacket laid out across the snow, the mountains stark against the deep blue sky.

We’d been warned to get up there early, while the snow was still crusty. By 10:00 it was soft and getting harder to snowshoe across, so we drove past Field to Wapta Falls, ate and hiked in summer heat, and then stopped at Emerald Lake on the way back. We’ve now done a snapshot tour of Banff and Yoho National Parks.

Tomorrow: a quick trip into Kootenay National Park. Many Rocky Mountain trails (most?) are unsafe at the moment, because of the avalanche risk. It’s especially bad as spring started last Thursday, and the temperature is summer-warm, and the show is melting and sliding. Our next hike will be at Marble Canyon, with cleats for the ice, because it’s not at risk of avalanches, and the view is astounding.

Maureen

Have Notebook, Will Write

I adore my computers, both the desktop and my laptop. I am addicted to the internet, love the ease I can find things with Google, use email for most of my writing communication, tell other writers about the joy of working with Scrivener, and am deeply contented writing at the keyboard.

But a notebook holds a certain wonder, too. I have learned to write in notebooks in waiting rooms, in hotel lobbies, at airports, leaning against a tree on a mountainside, in libraries and coffee shops, in my garden, and at the park. It’s freed me up to handle errands more easily, and to travel without losing all my writing time.

I’ve discovered I can write surrounded by noise, a great surprise for someone who loves solitude. There’s something about the muttering in a coffee shop that’s really good for writing. And I’ve discovered sometimes I write really well, or dive into topics I wouldn’t write about otherwise, sitting with a notebook in an odd location.

And, perhaps because of this, I’m always running out of notebooks. Not the lovely journals people give me that I never use, because they intimidate me, but the coil-bound school notebooks I can scribble in. I can simply write, in my notebooks. I need some new ones, and I’m struggling to find what I like. Too many are fancy – a fancy notebook demands fancy writing. I want a notebook that can take anything I fling at it.

Maureen

Late, late spring

A month after the first flower opened in my garden, we’re still at the first flowers stage. I now have crocuses, snowdrops, scilla, and one lonely vinca bloom – but they’re all small, early flowers, close to the house on the warm, east side. Hepatica have opened, finally, in a blaze of blue in the front garden. This is the longest, coldest early spring I can remember.

It’s been a struggle to get the gardening work done. Can’t rake while there’s snow on the ground. Can’t dig the beds while the ground’s still frozen. Can’t put out the birdbath when the water could freeze and crack the birdbath. And yet, when spring does fully arrive, I’ll need to be ready, to plant as soon as the soil is warm enough, because our season is so short.

Then I comfort myself. We’re not still waiting for the white piles to melt, like in some places, in this late, late spring. And spring will come. Truly. It’s only in fiction that winter can last for years. Right?

Maureen