Winter Sunshine

  It rained yesterday. February rain is the greyest, dreariest rain you can experience. Snow banks sagged, roads flooded, and it looked like all the color had been washed away with the melting snow. It was one of those February days everyone dreads, and I went to bed early just to be done with it.

  And then today came along, and the sun was out in force as though to make up for yesterday's absence. Enough snow has survived to still cover the ground completely, and it turned to diamond in the sunlight. I drove to work with my windows down and music blaring, not even caring that I was at as stoplight and people were staring at me. I hope it gave them a good chuckle.

There is no drug quite so powerful as sunshine in February.

Or anytime, for that matter. The day reminded me of a hike MontAnia and I took last December up Jackson and Pierce in the White Mountains. We had woken up in North Conway in a fog bank as thick, as they say, as pea soup. We arrived at an equally foggy and dank trailhead, but in about twenty minutes we were immersed in sunshine--the fog, it turned out, was sitting low in the valley, and we were already above it. The rest of our day was spent hiking in the sun, so warm that we only needed jackets on the summits-and this was the White Mountains, in December. We didn't see a single other soul throughout the entire day, and I will always remember it as the best hike I have ever had. No masters required.

  That day the Mount Washington Observatory reported fifty mile views.

This is MontAnia not getting her Masters

Mount Washington seen from the summit of Pierce