Snowy delight

It wasn’t a soft, fluffy, floating gently away on a gossamer breeze snowball either – that would have been funny. It was a compact, hard, icy, mean one thrown with force.

It happened last Friday. I was on my way to catch my bus home after work, absorbed in  thought – or oblivious to my surroundings – when I felt something hit the left side of my face. I doubled over in pain, clutching my face with both hands. It’s weird when you have no idea what just happened but your brain is already trying to put the pieces together. Wet, cold, pain. An image of two young guys, twentyish, laughing. One throwing his arm back and forward, another swerving away at the last minute. And then bam!

Once I’d realized what had happened, I turned around and yelled. ‘Are you ****ing kidding me!?’ (not my finest moment). As they gathered more lumps of wet icy snow to throw at each other I yelled again: ‘don’t do it, it really hurt!’. I must admit, I sounded very Bridget Jonesy. In moments of stress my Englishness seeps out a bit more.

‘Sorry, sorry, hahahah!’.

They weren’t malicious guys, just oblivious, everyone loves a snowball fight/game, but still! Infuriatingly I had to put an ice pack on my throbbing face when I got home – by then my lower eyelid had started to swell up. I should’ve just rolled around face down in the snow outside our home.

Random stuff.

I was sick for nearly a month from mid-January into February. A whole month with the flu. This foul bug landed in my throat and sinuses and took up residence. A headache every night for two weeks, fever and chills – I could barely move. I felt decrepit, and weak. Missing playing in the snow, feeling any conditioning I had seeping away. I was a bit tentative on the first day back to any real activity since getting sick– snowshoeing last week on Hollyburn Mountain, a great spot for both cross country skiing and snow shoeing at Cypress Mountain Resort– but it felt good to move. And again yesterday in Cypress Provincial Park, a greyer day but still wonderful to feel myself puffing up a hill, pushing my body to work, breathing in snow scented air. It’s a great area to explore; quiet on the trails, stunning viewpoints with (at the moment) perfect snow conditions.

Looking across cross country trails, Hollyburn Mountain

Happy to be snowshoeing, Cypress Provincial Park

A cheeky gray jay perched on a snowshoe pole

Steller’s jay

Frozen needles

Snow crystals

Fell over in the snow, this time the impact was fun!