Spent about three hours out skiing today. The weather was very warm for skiing, nearly 40F, and if we'd had to break trail we'd never have been able to move. Good thing for us that the trails were so well tamped down from constant use, and the track was a delight to use.
Last night was a similar story; I rounded up a few friends and we went to Kleinstuck nature preserve, which was icy as a luge track. We only got in two laps because it was misting light rain. Sadly, it was so overcast that we didn't see the full moon, and probably won't see it tonight, either. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I got to put my new headlamp to good use.
Had a too-brief skiing expedition this morning, hoping to get some more in tomorrow. Also currently recruiting for nightskiing on the full-moon weekend of the 27th-28th, provided the snow sticks around. If you're in the area, and interested, drop me a line.
Dan: Okay, here's a map. We're here. We can take this trail or that one. That one's prettier, but it's going to be harder; you may have to take off your skis for part of it.
Me: That's okay. The scenery's more important than my dignity.
Dan: In fact, I think I can see on this map where you left your dignity. Back there at the bottom of the hill.
Me: I usually don't fall unless I intend to. It was either that or run into those saplings.
Dan: Yeah. You made the right call, provided you don't mind the bruises.
Me: I don't mind them much, but sometimes they freak Paul out.
Dan: Just tell him to use them as a Rorshach test.
Me: Yeah, but then he'll want to make drawings out of them. When Paul's drawing on my ass with a Sharpie marker, I'll know who to blame. "Hey look, this one's an alien!"
Dan: An alien that gets more jaundiced as the days go by.
Me: ... from the flu we gave him when he tried to invade.
Dan: ...
Me: I am so blogging this when I get home.
Looks like we're not going to have to buy a beef share this year -- my dad lets a bunch of guys hunt on his land, and they just brought him a nice young doe. I've paid for processing, an we'll have venison all year long. Yay!
Spent a lovely afternoon skiing today. Went to the Kalamazoo Nature Center with my buddy Dan, and got in at least two hours' worth, maybe a bit more. The sun was shining, the snow was just perfect, and we arrived back at the car just as the last pink light was fading from a mackerel sky. Saw lots of birds, starting with a big blue heron hunkered down by an open stream. We flushed an enormous hen-turkey -- probably a good twelve pounder -- and marveled at the heavy thump of her wings as she got off the ground. A large flock of Canada geese went past, low and loud enough that we could hear the whistling of their feathers. Best of all, I saw my very first Pileated woodpecker. I've been wanting to see one since I first read a story about them in Ranger Rick magazine when I was about seven, but have never been lucky enough until today. They're enormous, just a bit smaller than their more famous (and likely extinct) cousin the Ivory-billed woodpecker, and really impressive to see in flight. They have a lovely laughing call that we heard several times as we skied through the woods.
The mice were busy on the prairie preserve, and there were plenty of footprints with little tails dragging behind, moving between switchgrass and wild rye to harvest seeds. The deer were out -- we didn't see any, but did see plenty of fresh tracks, and the turkeys had been following the freshly-broken trail left by the snowshoers and skiiers (They're no dummies, Dan remarked). As we left, we passed three young guys in Carhartts, armed with snow shovels and sleds heading out to get in some crazy night sledding, which reminded me of all the crazy night sledding we used to do in Ypsi: sled shrapnel and stolen Taco Bell trays and Russ up to his shins in the Huron chasing after his saucer sled and Eric getting three seconds of hangtime before coming down right on his coccyx.
Good times.
And then I came home and made three kinds of cookie dough, for the big annual bakefest tomorrow. More on that, later.
This morning, I spent five hours kayaking in the Ottawa Marsh. Saw lots of Great Egrets, kingfishers, ducks of all sorts, and three juvenile bald eagles. Had no idea they have so much white on them when they're that age.
I hooked up with a group of like-minded folks I met on the Internets and was very glad to be along for the paddle. We put in at 126th and Old Allegan road and pretty much went from one end of the marsh to the other and back again. There wasn't very much open water, and I had a couple of times where I got hung up on sunken logs because my kayak was too long. Made it through with some creative paddling -- even went through one logjam backwards!
One of the highlights of the trip was maneuvering our way through some tight fits in a shallow maze of trees that looked like something out of a Brian Froud book. At one point we were flanked right and left by trees that had been toppled over into the water, their huge root systems still intact and forming a narrow passage between them Two ten-foot walls of dirt and exposed roots. And the best part was that the trees were still alive, though half-submerged. All the branches that were above water still had green leaves on them, turning autumn colors. There was also a tree that had tipped over -- but as it fell, its enormous root system folded on itself, forming an inverted-V of earth large enough to paddle through. Amazing.
I wasn't brave enough to risk any of my own electronics on the trip, but some of the other paddlers took some photos, so I'm hoping to post some of them soon.