Brisk

I am writing this from a hotel room in Yosemite. It’s a cozy little room, with a little patio right outside where I could sit, assuming it was about 40 degrees warmer and not raining and soggy out, but for a cold and wintery sort of night like this, it’s also just as cozy for curling into bed with lots of pillows and my little netbook and cranking the heat up high.

My coworker and his wife and I drove down this afternoon – a three hour trip involving lots of windy hills and enough change in elevation to kick off all sorts of lovely sinus pressure pain. It was mostly clear out until we started to descend into the valley, at which point the fog crept in and we drove along roads so dark that all you could see were piles of snow directly to either side of the road, the faint outlines of trees, and every once in a while, the pale ghost of a deer poised warily on the side of the road. By the time we arrived it was incredibly dark and the fog made it that much harder to see, which is why I promptly stepped into an icy puddle about two minutes after we got out of the car. Good thing I remembered to pack extra socks.

It’s cold and damp outside, but I am okay with that. Tomorrow will be an all-day meeting, so as usual there will be very little time (if any) to do any sight-seeing, but walking back from dinner to our rooms, we could hear the sound of the falls, even though it was too dark to see them, and this is likely to be my only chance to see snow this winter, even if it will only be a few short glimpses here and there.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies