Slugs on Foot

View of Neshaminy Creek from the 

Schofield Ford Covered Bridge,

Tyler State Park, Newtown, PA

21 January 2021

On our Friday night Insane Bike Posse Zoom Therapy Session, as Tom calls it, he suggested we meet at Tyler State Park for a Sunday morning walk. It was exactly what I needed to climb out of my own head.

We got there just as an organized run was ending. The boat house parking lot was almost full. Tom and Ricky flagged me down. Mighty Mike was parked next to me. 

Ricky had his real camera, a digital SLR with a zoom lens. "All cameras are real," he reminded me. 

I had my new Canon PowerShot; Tom had his. "I bought the black one this time," I told him. "Mine's black too," Tom said. "I got black because yours was silver." It'll be easy to tell them apart. Mine will be the one that breaks first.

When we were here with our bikes in December, half of the paved paths weren't plowed. Today they all were.

Even the trail to the  Schofield Ford covered bridge showed signs of dirt underneath. I'm not sure I've ever been here when it wasn't completely snow-covered.

Tom and Mike went through while Ricky and I got pictures from the side.

Tom was taking pictures through the diamond-shaped windows. That seemed like a good idea.

I met Mike and Ricky on the other side. We stood talking and taking pictures for a while before we realized that Tom was waiting for us back where we'd started.

 

(Dang. If I'd just zoomed out a little more, I could have had his full reflection.)

Retracing our steps, we climbed back up the steep hill and turned to climb some more. We stopped near a stable for more pictures.

For what it's worth, I think snow-covered, sloping fields surrounded by bare trees are much more interesting to look at than the full greens of summer.

And horses don't tend to wear colorful blankets in the summer either. These were the United Horses of Benetton.

 A pair of tracks looked as if someone had gone up the slope sideways.

At the top of another hill, Ricky noticed ice shining on tree branches. To get the full shine would have meant shooting into the sun, so I took the picture from the side instead.

At the bottom of the hill, we took pictures of a stream from a snow-covered stone bridge.

We passed a snowy picnic table next to a dilapidated house.

It was across the path from a house that looked fully inhabited. The path we were on was called "Number 1 Lane Trail," and it shows up as a road on Google Maps. I wondered what it would be like to live here.

The trail curved uphill, past another picnic table and another run-down barn.

A cyclist passed us. He was riding a Cannondale Topstone 4. "Hey, Ricky! He's got our bike! We clearly have the 'it' bike of 2020."

Then we were back at the boat house bridge over Neshaminy Creek.

Tom read from his pedometer and told us we'd gone about seven miles. I'm no good at judging distance on foot. We'd mostly been on clear blacktop with the occasional excursion over half-trampled snow, so these miles weren't exactly strenuous. Still, my legs were a little tired. But my head had cleared.

In my driveway, I took the camera out again for a low redbud branch resting on a cracked, snow-filled flower pot.

Snowed In

 

Snowstorm Number I Lost Count

20 February 2021

I haven't been outside on a bike in two weeks. I have been outside shoveling a lot of snow. The storm we had 13 days ago dropped a lot of thick, heavy flakes. It was enough to coat branches and make them pretty without knocking them down. 

Mid-storm, I went out onto the back porch to take pictures and, of course, check on Big Mama, the house spider who I think is still alive. She's tucked away in a corner, looking very dead, yet every few days her legs are facing a different direction. Anyway, I tried to get a shot of the yard through the screen. It didn't work.

On our street, we have to play chicken with the township's snow plow. If we don't get out to the edge of our driveways to clear away the first round of ice boulders, we'll be locked in for sure on the second pass. Despite my best efforts to dig halfway across the street, more than once over the years I've come home from work to find my driveway behind a wall of ice. I've taken to bringing a shovel into the car with me, and I've had to use it to get back into the driveway. It's happened once already this year. I dug far out into the street again and hoped for the best.

The snow had stopped, but the sky hadn't brightened.

Before this one could melt away, there was another little storm, a fluffy one, and we dug out again. Then we got a big one on Thursday. It started off fluffy, at an inch an hour, and then turned to sleet. That dig-out was work. 

Again, I heard the plow and suited up. This time, two of my neighbors, both women, were digging too. The plow came through again, and one of them stopped the driver. I couldn't hear the conversation, but when he came by again, he was driving very slowly. I stood halfway down my driveway, turning the shovel in my hands as if it were a blowpipe or a weapon, and watched as he approached and, very carefully, made sure to keep each of our driveways clear. Hell hath no fury like a woman plowed in. 

At night, freezing rain fell and turned our street into a sheet of ice. I took one look in the morning and knew we'd be on our indoor trainers for another week.

It snowed on and off all day Friday too.

Saturday was, finally, sunny. 

When I was a kid, I had this thing about wanting to keep some part of our yard free of footprints. I liked the way unbroken snow looked, and I still do. Our postal worker always tramps across the front yard to get to our mailbox, even after we've neatly cleared the walkway. I understand; it saves time. But it disrupts the surface, damnit. 

The back yard, though, is a festival of light and shadows, and the occasional squirrel tracks.

A thin coating of ice covered the ornaments.

Ice sat on top of the azalea leaves and made the branches high in the neighbor's trees shine.

Our drainpipe spewed ice.

I like how our redbud looks against our neighbor's privacy fence.

In the early afternoon, a wave of directionless anxiety hit me. Maybe it was the cumulative effect of so many gloomy days, work stress, and lack-of-vaccine hopelessness* that made me want to get outside and walk somewhere, anywhere. Jack was having none of that. He's nearly impossible to get outside on a good day. So, in the late afternoon, I went to the Pole Farm by myself.

Although the parking lot was full, the paths I took were empty and, for the most part, not well-worn. The walk didn't calm me at all, but at least I got some good pictures out of it.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet some of the Slugs at Tyler State Park. I hope I'm calmed down by then.

(*There's an underlying, unspoken ethos that, if you qualify for a vaccine and haven't been able to find an appointment, it's somehow your fault. I'm in Group 2, which means that I'm too healthy to qualify for whatever's out there now. Jack, however, is in Group 1c, and can't land an appointment. Apparently, one of us is supposed to sit up till midnight with half a dozen browser windows open, hitting "refresh" every 60 seconds until Jack wins the vaccine lottery. We're not doing that; he tries during the day. So I guess it's our fault that he's still vulnerable. Whenever a friend scores a jab, it's cause for celebration. I'm always happy when someone eligible gets their shot. I work with one person who cheated the system; I'm still pissed off. My employer, a wealthy university, has promised vaccines to all faculty, staff, students, and their households; at the same time, we've been told they have no idea when that will happen, and to seek shots elsewhere. So Jack and I are on my employer's and the state's waitlists, if nothing else. When I consider that, I calm down. Hmmph. I guess I know what's at the core of my mood, and I can't do much about it but wait.)