Current situation:
Sitting in front of the fire, turtle neck, flannel, fleece, and fuzzy slippers, a cup of tea, a good book, tired from shoveling, but still exhilarated from a couple of hours in the sun and snow.
And just like that?
School is closed again tomorrow.
The storm arrived just as predicted: it began snowing right around 4 this morning and the roads were terrible all day. So confident was the forecast that our school district canceled classes at 5 last night, long before a flake had fallen. And when the skies cleared right around 3 this afternoon, there was more snow than we've had in at least 3 years.
The roads were still lousy, not a plow had passed our way, and school was canceled again for tomorrow. The snow itself was beautiful; heavy packed powder blanketed the ground and although trees bowed beneath its weighty robe, they did not shrug it off, and the sun set over a laden landscape.
There will be time enough tomorrow to dig out, but today we simply enjoyed the weather.
I finally made it up the hill to clean out my garden for the winter. It was 65 today, and I worked in a t-shirt and jeans to stack the tomato cages and pull up and compost the dried bean stalks, peppers, peonies, and sunflowers. It's been so warm the last month or so, that bright green weeds have already covered a lot of the mulch and soil, and I got a fair amount of dirt under my nails as I pulled those up, too. After a couple of hours, the place was reasonably tidy and all ready for the big snow storm that's predicted for tomorrow.
It's been gray and rainy here all day, but holiday lights still twinkle and blink as the first day of the new year has subsided to quiet darkness. Our traditional dinner is simmering on the stove-- greens, black-eyed peas, ham, chicken, corn, and rice, and some of the family will join us soon.
So far, so good, 2022.
We always marvel at how much easier it is to pack to come home than it is to leave. This precept isn't really that surprising: coming home only requires gathering what we have brought and acquired; leaving home often demands careful thought and curation of all the stuff we have to select and bring what we need and what we may want while away.
I found the same to be true for our Christmas Tree, which met an earlier than usual end this year. When we got home from our holiday travels, the branches were too dry and droopy to make it to New Years. And so I spent an hour or so yesterday afternoon carefully lifting the ornaments to minimize needle dropping, appreciating each one before gently replacing it in the bin where it will spend the next 11 and 1/2 months. The job took half as long as it did to put the tree up just a few weeks ago.
The forced cheerfulness of a Hallmark movie was not the right accompaniment for this task. Instead? I chose to watch the first couple episodes of the second season of Evil, the supernatural thriller which Paramount+ describes this way:
Evil is a psychological mystery that examines the origins of evil along the dividing line between science and religion. The series focuses on a skeptical female psychologist who joins a priest-in-training and a contractor as they investigate the Church's backlog of unexplained mysteries, including supposed miracles, demonic possessions, and hauntings. Their job is to assess if there is a logical explanation or if something truly supernatural is at work.
That worked.
Sometimes when I'm writing for this blog I pause to do a bit of research on my topic. Then, it's a happy convergence of writing to discover what I think, what I know, and what I'd like to know.
Take yesterday, for example. I knew quite a bit about Great Falls, but I was also writing to tell about something new I had learned, and as I wrote, I looked up "Matildaville" to add to the knowledge I had about that long-ago town. I found out that it was named by Henry Lee for his wife, Matilda. Lee, who was known during the Revolutionary War as Light Horse Harry, was an early invester in the Patowmack Canal, and owned most of the acreage that makes up Great Falls Park today.
Matilda died in childbirth in 1790, and Lee married again. Legend has it that a few years later, his second wife, Anne, was pronounced dead after a seizure and entombed in the family vault. A few days later a gardener was terrified to hear noises coming from inside the mausoleum. When the doors were opened, they found Mrs. Lee alive. One year later, her youngest son, Robert Edward was born.
Imagine how differently American history may have unfolded if Anne Lee had not been rescued.
Who knew?
(Not me, but now I do.)
This warm afternoon in December provided just the latest in countless hikes I have taken on the trails of Great Falls Park, right up the river from our hometown. For a relatively small park, there is quite a diversity of trails. The most popular is the River Trail which traces the edge of Mather Gorge and has been built to accommodate easy walks with scenic views, but other choices include the old Carriage Road, the Ridge Trail, the Canal Path, and my personal favorite, The Matildaville Trail, which we took today.
That path winds past the ruins of the town that was built in the late 18th century to support the construction of the Potowmack Canal, George Washington's Virginia competitor for the C&O Canal right across the river in Maryland. The canal and the town ultimately failed, but relics of both exist in the woods around the falls to this day.
Just south of the ruins the trail leads to a pretty meadow ringed by tall and rocky scarps, and then the way ascends steeply to the ridge line that overlooks the gorge. From the top, a hiker has several options: continue either north or south on the Ridge Trail, take a steep path down to the River Trail, or enjoy a gentle sloping walk along the Carriage Road.
They all have their pleasures, but today as we stood in the winter wood surrounded by bare trees, I finally saw how close together they all run. Each trail was really no more than 50 feet from the next, running mostly parallel to the river. A separation of dramatic geography and three-seasons of foliage is what allows over 15 miles of beautiful and varied hiking in a park of only 1.25 square miles. We chose the Carriage Road, and I walked on with an even greater appreciation for our local treasure.
