Laughing bean!

Little bean laughed for the first time yesterday. He was looking at himself in the mirror and just cracked up.

Good for bean. These days when I look at myself in the mirror I feel like crying.

Reward

I went running the other evening, and I was pretty cranky about it. I'd put it off all day. When you don't do it a lot, running hurts.

This is what I saw when I got to the top of the ridge.

I smiled, ran down crunchy snow in the dark, and drank a really tasty beer.

Open-mouthed berry

Lucy

The other morning it was snowing gently. It was so pretty that I grabbed the camera and walked down to Lederer Park. I like it there and felt like I'd find something interesting to photograph if I kept my eyes open.

I ended up at the statue of Lucy Lederer. She's a spry old lady, legs planted about shoulder-width apart, no-nonsense bun at the base of her neck, right hand holding onto a cane placed resolutely in front of her like she's staking a claim on her little pedestal. She has a kind smile on her face, but I'm sure that she could raise hell on mean people and bluebird-stalking cats with that cane of hers.

Lucy must have loved green places. There's a small space between her fused bronze fingers and her little bronze thumb. I've never actually seen anyone slide a flower or branch or colored leaf into that space, but I almost never see Lucy without some kind of bouquet in her hand.

This day she was holding a branch of white pine. I bet she likes color, so I picked a berried sprig off a nearby rose bush and added it to the greenery.

Brainstorm

Brian hadn't called me in a really long time. I only answer my phone about 50% of the time, but I was intensely curious so I picked up.

"What are you doing right now, " he said.
"Heading to a doctor's appointment," I said. "Why?
"I'm thinking of going to Black Mo to make some turns," says Brian.
There was about three quarters of an inch of snow on the ground. I asked him if he'd wait an hour so I could come too.

One hour and twenty minutes later we're in the car driving to Black Moshannon. Black Mo is a state park with a defunct lift-served ski area. They hadn't mowed the slope this fall, so we made the first turns of the season in about five inches of powdery fluff coating about twenty inches of warm wet grass. It was so good we took two laps.

This is my problem. Brian is, oddly, looking for a job elsewhere. Somewhere with whiter pastures. Steeper pastures. Pastures that require a snorkel and an avy cannon to navigate. I don't know anyone else besides Brian who would have the desperation and vision to drive to Black Mo and hike for turns when there's less than an inch of snow on the ground downtown. It takes a odd sense of humor to be a skier in Pennsylvania. Appreciation of the absurd is helpful.

So I'm thinking that if I can find Brian a really classy girlfriend in the next month or so he'll stick around. A single, attractive, sane lady that's willing to share her living space with a super-size quiver of skis and won't mind playing second fiddle on a powder day.

Little Red Newt

Not Having A Lot of Money is Fun Sometimes

If we had a ton of money, the four of us would have gone to Bacchus or the Gilded Otter to eat, drink beer, and hang out in noisy warmth all evening before going back to hotel rooms to fall asleep with the television on. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be cooking mac and cheese in the dark by the overlook, passing the headlamp back and forth to see what we're eating or fetch more beer or look for another warm layer in the stinky climbers' disorder of the Subaru. We wouldn't be drinking ourselves warm with scotch, talking about chickens and Yosemite and grad school while a gorgeous sliver of a moon slides up the sky over Millbrook. We would have bought ourselves out of a familiar dilemma; the cold is finally too much for scotch or fleece or 500 fill-power down to manage, but it's too boring to admit defeat, drive to Russ and Amy's, and crawl into the tents we've pitched in their yard.

Constraint breeds creativity. We decide to hike shivering up to the boulders on the carriage road, sharing three headlamps and the flask of scotch. Doug and Michael work the Gill Egg, taking turns climbing in the headlamp's tunnel of light while two of us spot down below. The Uberfall is dark and cold and quiet and entirely ours while the Taurid meteor shower streaks the night sky. Michael, Doug, and I monkey on the boulders until we're sweating and removing layers, following each other on multiple traverses of the warm-up boulder. Scott takes photos and, as a reward for his patient effort, comes away with the shot I'm posting here. Later that night, after we're stuffed into sleeping bags in our tents pitched under the bright cloudy arc of the Milky Way, a pack of coyotes must have just cornered a rabbit in the field next to us. The dissonant, sinuous harmony of their banshee-dog chorus wafts over the field as we fall asleep.

This really isn't anything that I have a whole ton of experience with, but I'd imagine that having enough money to consistently purchase comfort on every climbing trip can be really expensive. There are worse (much worse) things than a sitting down to enjoy a grass-fed cheeseburger, some sweet potato fries and a pint of porter with a group of climbing friends in the guaranteed comfort of a brewpub. But it would have cost us each at least twenty five dollars, a midnight send of the Gill Egg, a really neat photo, a rare experience of solitude at the Uberfall, a Taurid light show, and a crazy avant-garde piece of coyote choral music as a lullaby.