Ben and I went skiing today!

I hadn’t really been before, so it was pretty exciting. We covered some miles and got a little lost when we tried to bushwhack a way to the airport. I’m sore and delighted, and I only wiped out once. I have officially commandeered some skis and boots from P.E. storage to live in my kitchen until further notice. It felt so good to get outside for a few hours and break a sweat doing something new and having an adventure in unexplored territory.

The sky was a little gray today, and the snow and aspens were strikingly rich in that white texture that makes this place so subtly splendid in winter. I still can’t quite accept that it’s only the first week of October, that the fall color hasn’t come in yet in New England. My world looks like this, though it feels like spring when the sun comes out and we wear our t-shirts outside and the eaves drip.

I love how the seasons change here. Some places have four, but I think we must have at least eight: each day is so different from the one before that there should surely be names for the gradations: fall-with-snow, summer-with-yellow-trees, frozen-eyelashes-winter, shadows-cast-again. If you pay attention, every day here marks some end and some beginning. This week the eaves drip, next week, they won’t. Soon the wet hems of my jeans will freeze solid, and I’ll have to trade my bean boots for baffins.