The Chinook came through yesterday and melted the snow. If you've seen Charlie Russel's (sic) painting, "Waiting for the Chinook" you can imagine the good it brings with it. With the snow and ice covering the grass, cattle can't feed. The warm wind uncovers their food, often in the nick of time, often too late to do them any good. Last season I saw some land and snow-locked cattle released down the road during a Spring thaw, and through their hides every rib shown. A starving cow is not a sight you forget, so used to seeing them full and sloppy with food and their own weight.
Next to the Northern Lights I can't imagine more comfort than the Chinook winds. There you are in the middle of Winter, and a summer breeze with all the scents of growing things, like the Pine that's stood dormant, coats the land. I walked outside in my bare feet and stood in the melting snow patches. It's just great. What a nice world to give these things. What they call, "Indian Winter" is a different thing. For a week or two in Fall, there's often a sunny patch of warmth, one last reminder of Summer. I love that time, but the Chinook is different. The Chinook comes on its own and leaves in its own time. It makes you feel as if it were really alive. I complained once to my late friend John Camprose about the weather in the Big Horns in Wyoming.
"This damn place is always doing something. In Winter you get the blizzards, the mud in Spring, and the wind in Summer. It won't leave you alone."
"Yeah," he said, "but it's alive
I've said most of this before, probably even part of the title. I'm like a chinook wind too, I guess, showing up randomly in the dead of Winter, repeating myself and bringing a lot of hot air. But this Chinook is a great thing. I've always paid attention to the elements, the weather, the ground and water. There is comfort and peace if you look for it. My children, with the possible exception of the oldest, Carter, do not particularly notice the Chinook, other than observing 'it melted all the snow'. They are so full of energy, growing every day, life and adventure overides the soft event. But they will. If they were hurting or hungry they would notice, if they were older.
I'm reminded of an old man and a young man together on the trail. The young one picks up a branch to carry along and half act as a staff. The old man tells him to put it down, it is a waste of time and energy. "It's no problem for me", the younger says, "I hardly notice the weight."
"You will", the old man says, "it adds up over the miles, and besides, you'll need the energy later for things more useful."
Anyway, wherever I go in life, in which ever city I live, I keep watching the sky and ground and the weather. They are a part of me in some ways, and unlike people are always there. "It's unhealthy to assign too many life-like qualities to inantimate objects or conditions," the mental health specialists insist, and they're right; but it's always worked for me.
And you just know a tool as elemental as a khukuri fits right in. IF the Woods could speak the kukri would have been the tool they gave to man.
Hooray for Chinooks, Hooray for khuks, Hooray for this forum and most of all Christmas.
Merry Christmas!
munk
Next to the Northern Lights I can't imagine more comfort than the Chinook winds. There you are in the middle of Winter, and a summer breeze with all the scents of growing things, like the Pine that's stood dormant, coats the land. I walked outside in my bare feet and stood in the melting snow patches. It's just great. What a nice world to give these things. What they call, "Indian Winter" is a different thing. For a week or two in Fall, there's often a sunny patch of warmth, one last reminder of Summer. I love that time, but the Chinook is different. The Chinook comes on its own and leaves in its own time. It makes you feel as if it were really alive. I complained once to my late friend John Camprose about the weather in the Big Horns in Wyoming.
"This damn place is always doing something. In Winter you get the blizzards, the mud in Spring, and the wind in Summer. It won't leave you alone."
"Yeah," he said, "but it's alive
I've said most of this before, probably even part of the title. I'm like a chinook wind too, I guess, showing up randomly in the dead of Winter, repeating myself and bringing a lot of hot air. But this Chinook is a great thing. I've always paid attention to the elements, the weather, the ground and water. There is comfort and peace if you look for it. My children, with the possible exception of the oldest, Carter, do not particularly notice the Chinook, other than observing 'it melted all the snow'. They are so full of energy, growing every day, life and adventure overides the soft event. But they will. If they were hurting or hungry they would notice, if they were older.
I'm reminded of an old man and a young man together on the trail. The young one picks up a branch to carry along and half act as a staff. The old man tells him to put it down, it is a waste of time and energy. "It's no problem for me", the younger says, "I hardly notice the weight."
"You will", the old man says, "it adds up over the miles, and besides, you'll need the energy later for things more useful."
Anyway, wherever I go in life, in which ever city I live, I keep watching the sky and ground and the weather. They are a part of me in some ways, and unlike people are always there. "It's unhealthy to assign too many life-like qualities to inantimate objects or conditions," the mental health specialists insist, and they're right; but it's always worked for me.
And you just know a tool as elemental as a khukuri fits right in. IF the Woods could speak the kukri would have been the tool they gave to man.
Hooray for Chinooks, Hooray for khuks, Hooray for this forum and most of all Christmas.
Merry Christmas!
munk
I was clueless as to what to get her, but the last 2 days she's filled her stocking several times with hints and suggestions of things she'll get with her new paychecks from her new job. Had to tell her Christmas was coming and she should wait to buy anything for herself.