Whoda thunkit? With each pause, and there should be many, the snow shovel, of all things, evoked a billion or so shimmering and dancing ice crystals. Heber never looked so good!
Actually, they were everywhere – not just in the shovel’s path. They hovered in space and sparkled as if playing with light were how they stretched and yawned – how they greeted the dawn. It was as if they were facing the four directions and sprinkling phosphorescent corn pollen. Think Lucy in the sky with diamond dust.
The “pause” and its aforementioned repetitive and reflective quality cannot be overstated. If one treats the removal of a specified area of frozen translucent ice crystals as the sole goal of these maneuvers, then one would totally miss its counter-function as entrée to an outdoor museum.
Not only is the pause important in conjunction with the maintenance of heart rate when nudged up against its longtime nemesis, “work” (which, by the way, once expressed itself to the old slide-rule crowd as “Force times Distance”), but also as a way of opening doors of perception.
Have you noticed lately that most all left-brain right-brain issues arrive straight from the factory with the non-optional self-insinuation mode hard-wired to “enable.” Its “off” switch, when included, seems to be always on the fritz.
To not pause would be akin to striding briskly along a gallery wall past the modernist renderings of Charlie Russell, Maynard Dixon, and Georgia O’Keefe. To the intuitive shovelmeister, it is much more of a “Museum of Modern Art” out there than a jungle.
Until, that is, the frozen moment is interrupted by what appears to be a leaping and bounding white-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) – which is a “hare,” by the way. Then the landscape defaults to a Museum of Natural History.
These guys live above ground amid the sage in small depressions. That isn’t to say they’re neurotic. They refuse to tunnel, or burrow, for that matter – probably because it would involve more of that force-times-distance formula than suits their lounging style.
Now the assigned identification of this critter came about because it’s white in the winter and doesn’t seem to fit any of the other local hare descriptions. The black-tailed of the species (Lepus californicus) never turns white and the snowshoe variety (Lepus americanus) wears Sorrels this time of year.
However, as our hopping neighbor continues its romp across the sage, deductions begin tripping over one another. These white-tail buggers are supposed to be nocturnal and this just might be the brightest, most glistening morning in the geologic history of the sphere.
Maybe it’s been out on the town and is just late getting home. Their social lives are probably not all that dissimilar to rabbits. The sagebrush goes on forever and the party never ends.
With winterlude breakfast fare consisting mostly of buds, bark, and twigs, you can see why he’s in a hurry to locate his digs. How they are able to perform this function in deep snow boggles the mind. It must be one of those Emperor Penguin, Steelhead trout, Monarch butterfly kind of things. If Thomas Wolfe can’t go home again, how can they?
And, lucky for the bounder, the joint is buds, bark, and twig rich. Well, at least bark and twigs remain on the shelf. The buds have seemingly been usurped by another species for medicinal purposes.
The fact that the Lepus townsendii operate mainly at night brought about an all-time favorite close encounter with the upper end of the food chain hereabouts back in the day. If memory serves, it was about seven or eight years ago when the pickup found itself bouncing along a nearby snowpacked byway on its way home.
Almost as if its arrival had been “intented,” a hare, in very much of a hurry – make that a panic – and obviously hopped-up on a bad bud or something, erupted from the sage and, demonstrating a quite-erratic bouncing technique directly in front of the vehicle, attempted to make itself invisible. Suffice to say he had spring in his step.
The cause of this effect immediately appeared fully spread out in gorgeous ferocity. It was a cougar (Felis concolor or maybe Puma concolor or maybe even Elvis concolor) — beautifully suspended in time a couple of feet off the road and rapidly closing on its prey.
The truly random and haphazard manner in which the hare ricocheted off the snow should have proven a saving grace. If he didn’t have any idea where he was heading, how could the big cat. By the time it realized that its prey had disappeared, it would be in Park Meadows.
Cougars-in-the-neighborhood had been the main topic of discussion ever since tracks began appearing frozen in the snow near the back door. Animal tracking guidebooks are best sellers in these parts. They are usually held in one hand while mugsfull of questionable inspiration are gripped in the other.
To us, all wildcats are cougars. We couldn’t differentiate between a puma, panther, mountain lion, or catamount if they wore nametags. The guide books weren’t much help either, other than giving us a sense of hard-earned manliness. Hey, anyone else need a refill.
Well, it’s probably time to move another shovelful of the white stuff off to the side. You do recall that that’s what we were about here. Musing aside, there’s work (FxD) to be done. Just don’t forget, every so often, to pause and take in the twinkle in Mother Nature’s eye.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.