Another trip around the Sun

Just when I thought that all hope was lost, a brief, yet intense Spring snowstorm dumped over a foot of light snow in the mountains Wednesday night, allowing us to, once again, enjoy a priveleged day in the Wasatch--a rare treat these days, as the Sun continues to rise higher in the April sky.  Thursday wasn't the deepest we'd seen it--or, our biggest day in terms of vertical gain--but the novelty of occupying a landscape that will, in a few short weeks, be radically transformed from a vast, unbroken carpet of white into an erratic mass of jagged talus, is a very cool feeling--in spots, you're probably standing ten to fifteen feet above the Summer surface level!  Mountains are dynamic places, and if you can spend enough time in them, these gradual, often miniscule changes become evident if you're of a mind to notice.  Tuesday will be 33 years.  Not a long time, just 33 such transitions from Winter to Spring up there in those secret and remote points in space, 33 laps around our star.