Yesterday when (yet another!) snowstorm took hold of Boise, we joined an impromptu neighborhood shoveling-party. 5 neighbors, 3 shovels, 2 brooms, 1 snowblower (till we ran it out of gas), 1 dustpan (for hand-scooping), assorted bags of icemelt, plus 2 “helping” dogs (plus one “helping” chronicler)… all added up to a merry band of nearly-snowed-in RV-neighbors!
So… What to do when your city is under a Winter-Weather State of Emergency and even church services are cancelled? Head to the Idaho mountains for MORE snow, of course!
Jon and I went sledding.
This wasn’t ski-hill-with-a-lift sledding. It was hike-up-a-mountainside sledding, in knee-to-hip-deep snow . Two observations here… I’m feeling muscles I forgot I HAD. And I’m glad I’ve quit smoking!
Okay, one more observation: I’ve married the Energizer Bunny!! For every run I made, he logged two, his delighted yodels echoing off the opposite hillside as he flew faster every time.
The snow was falling so thickly that our sleds got completely coated just in the hike up the hill, and we got to looking like a pair of Yetis as it clung to our coats and hats.
Sitting at the top of our run, we watched the snow falling, the trees shedding their accumulations in spontaneous mini-avalanches here and there, and our tiny truck at the bottom of the hill. We may not have been to church, but that time was a praise-song with a tune all its own. A praise-song with echoes.
And we had that mountain all to ourselves.
We stopped for a snow-picnic, sitting on our sleds with the box from my new boots between us like a table, constructing sandwiches with plenty of extra snow as a condiment, especially after the tree above us chose that moment to dump one of the mini-avalanches right on our heads!
Mountainside sledding requires (to borrow Jon’s words) “cultivating a path”… We forged our way uphill through that deep snow (I won’t lie—even with Jon going ahead of me, I was audibly wheezing by the time we stopped) and then coaxed the sleds down the first time or two. Once we had a run established, it got faster with every ride. (And thank goodness, the uphill got easier too, when we had our own footsteps to follow.)
It just took cultivation.
There’s a lesson in that, when I’m faced with a difficult path, uphill OR downhill. The path will get easier as it’s cultivated… And I shouldn’t be too proud to borrow the footsteps of someone God puts in front of me.
Kana's Chronicles 