S'now place like home...

*Note: The photos in this story are not mine, I found them on Pinterest - follow the link under the photo to find the origional source

The past has been very much on my mind and in my psyche lately, mostly because my present is a pretty bleak and unpleasant place these days.  It revisits me in my dreams regularly - people I used to know, things I used to do...

For example, last night I was visited by my mother and my father - in their former house, searching the basement for some books belonging to my old painting hobby.  It was one of those frustrating dreams where you never find what you were looking for, but still...  (Actually, it was found and then lost again.)  My nieces and sisters were even there as I was dividing my excess stuff with them.  One other character showed up - someone who for the last couple of decades has only shown up in my dreams to shoot me point blank in the chest.  This time he was cheerful, friendly and glad to see me! (...and married to that first wife.)  The kind of dreams that linger on your mind and haunt you for a while...

When I was home at Christmas time, it snowed (as I mentioned before.)
At home in Payson, when it snows, it comes down hard and fast - dropping or dumping a foot or two at a time.  While we were visiting my grand daughters in their new home in the foothills, I was trying to explain to Millie about snow drifts and what it was like when I was a kid, living in the foothills of AF...

Winter Memories

We lived just a mile from the mouth of the canyon in a rural area called Highland.  In the winter, it not only snowed volumes, but the canyon winds blew hard and drifted and sculpted the snow into beautiful whipped cream drifts.  We loved going out after a snow storm to survey how old man winter had managed to alter the landscape this time...

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One year, the drifts reached the eaves of the chicken coops that lined the horse corrals.  We had this brilliant idea of climbing up on the roof of the coop, and jumping down into the drifts that were almost as tall as we were.  We walked the fence line and clambered up on the slippery roof... and jumped!  Only to find out that getting into the snowbank was the easy part.  Getting out was another story.  It took a couple of people to pull me out, and I had to limp back to the house in wet freezing socks, because my boots chose to stay buried for a couple of days...

We had a little irrigation ditch that surrounded our property which was a favorite playground year round.  There was always a little stream running to keep us cool in the summer, and an icy wonderland in the winter.  One year, the ditch drifted over so you couldn't tell it was there - so we dug down into it and fashioned the interior of a car in the frigid "clay."  Our "convertible" had not only seats, door handles and pedals, but it was also equipped with a jockey box where we could store our gloves after they became too wet to keep us warm anymore. Because of its shady location, we were able to play there for a week or two, before it became slushy and washed downstream.

The road that ran in front of our house dipped down and then back up a bit where it met the Alpine Highway.  One year, the snow drifted through there so that the road seemed to be level all the way across to the highway.  That morning, a car came barreling down the street, not realizing there was a hidden hill there, and sank clear up to the windows.  It was stuck there for days...

When the snow was particularly deep, the snow plow threw up barricades on either side of the street between our house and the church.  We conspired to dig out windows in our fortress to watch for cars where we could pelt them with snowballs, completely unseen.  However, the limited angle made it impossible to see a vehicle until it was right across from us, so by the time we could launch one, it was too late.  We sadly abandoned that plan...

 I never learned to ice skate, but when the ditch overflowed and flooded the pasture, and froze solid, I would pretend - and spend hours sliding around on the slippery field in my red rubber galoshes.  (While the horses stood watching... and snickering.)

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Besides getting stuck and building snowmen, playing fox and geese was a favorite winter pastime.  We had a pretty big front yard, so we could stamp out the circle as big as we wanted, and play until our faces didn't move anymore.  When we came in, we would crank the heat up to 80 degrees and huddle around the heat vent until our fingers and toes had feeling in them again.

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 Winter time is cozy time - even now I love looking out the window after it snows and just enjoying the look of the freshly frosted world.  ...And it still irks me when the school kids make footprints in my clean white snow covered yard!  :-)