New Game
It’s like a board game for dogs! Cyndie gave Delilah a new present to challenge her intrepid canine intellect. It started slowly, with Delilah unclear about the particulars of moving the sliding tiles to uncover the treats her nose was telling her were inside.
When it comes to doggie treats, a certain sense of urgency is demonstrated. Miss D was showing little interest in learning the nuances of this “game” with her intense focus on getting another treat between her teeth no matter what it took.
A little timid at first, Delilah used only her nose to push aside the sliding covers in order to inhale the treat as it was exposed.
Then she rose to her feet for better leverage and tried gripping at the tiles with her teeth.
Before the first session with her new game was over, she was sliding some of the pieces with her paw.
When the game came out again later in the afternoon for a second session, Delilah showed impressive improvement in refining her techniques at solving the challenges of uncovering treats. The treat for us was being able to witness her curiosity and intelligence so visibly demonstrated.
That is infinitely more satisfying than when she thrashes at our windows barking endlessly at a squirrel in the yard.
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Watching War
The ugly spectacle of war has a fresh outburst staining the human experience, echoing all the wars, big and small, that have come before. I don’t have as much reason to celebrate all things Ukrainian as I do to detest the decisions of Putin’s Russia. The possibility that Russia is undertaking aggression that risks chances of becoming a world war leaves us all witnesses to history repeating itself.
It is deeply unsettling to watch insanity play out in real-time. It is frustrating to witness lies perpetrated endlessly with little in the way of consequences. In the US, we have been subjected to bizarre levels of misinformation from unbelievable numbers of misguided followers of dubious individuals for too many recent years.
This morning I saw a few clips from just a few weeks ago with quotes from Russian leadership stating that they wouldn’t invade Ukraine.
Sure they won’t.
I don’t want a world war. At the same time, it feels wrong to just watch a world power unleash its military might against any other nation-state without a unified response from the rest of the world beyond threats to economically shun them. Maybe isolating the invading nation will ultimately cripple them, but it is really difficult to endure the carnage that is being unleashed in the meantime.
It stings to see and hear the blatant misinformation and concurrent ban of world news that is being reported as happening in Russia.
If there is a lesson to be learned in becoming a well-informed person, I suggest that it should be one of developing healthy skepticism when messages become repeatedly and exclusively one-sided. Whether it be reasons to go to war, reasons to avoid mitigation actions during a virus pandemic, or reasons to blindly follow demagogues and autocrats, the exclusive messages heavily delivered should not be unquestionably swallowed.
Today, in order to purge the profusion of information showing battle-scarred people and places in Ukraine, I am striving to focus on the people rising to the occasion of supporting refugees flooding away from the war. That, and trying to remain patient in the difficult wait for economic sanctions to cause Russia to end their military aggression.
While doing so, I’m finding new reasons to celebrate all things Ukrainian with every passing minute.
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Glazy Morning
Wet precipitation when the temperature hovers around the freezing point is a perfect recipe for hazardous footing. This morning we woke to ice covering everything and faced a slippery challenge walking Delilah and making our way down to feed the horses.
To our surprise, the horses were navigating the crazy conditions with relative ease. I suspect the advantage of having four points of contact with the ground and being almost ten times our weight allows them to deal with the slippery footing better than we do.
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They were judicious about moving around and calmly settled into enjoying the feed served up in their pans on the ground. I get a sense that their ability to cope with the situation better than us is a function of their living outside in the elements. They were experiencing it as it was happening throughout the night and adjusting to conditions as they changed.
In contrast, we arose from our warm, snuggly bed and stepped out of our comfortable house into the shocking iciness that threatened to slam us to the ground with each slippery step.
I tried to prepare Delilah for the craziness on the front steps but she pretty much had to figure it out for herself when the pads of her paws couldn’t get a grip on the surface.
The outlook for the rest of the day is the opposite of sunny. There is more rain expected, possibly even thunderstorms this afternoon, but with a little warmer temperatures so maybe not as much ice.
We aren’t sure about how the horses will deal with heavier precipitation. They have shown significant anxiety about being confined to stalls in the barn so we are inclined to leave them out until they get uncomfortable enough to need a break from the weather. Maybe then they will be more interested in the indoor option.
In preparation for the possibility, we added pads to the floor of Mix’s stall after she carved up the soil something awful with pawing and kicking last time, when she kicked boards down in a tantrum. In addition to the dust storm that must have resulted, she excavated a few large stones with her aggressive gyrations in there.
Tonight might end up being a chance to test that new floor.
As always, the weather will dictate our decisions.
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Tested Patience
If you were engrossed in a book that was an ultimate “page-turner” of a story, you might stay up a little too late reading extra chapters. A good story captures the imagination and gets in our heads. The characters hang around our thoughts all day. The fictional world merges with everything else going on in our minds.
At least the stories that are compressed into two-and-a-half-hour movies compact all the mix-up of brain interaction into one brief distraction. Somewhere between the movie and a good book lies series dramas with roughly 8 to 12 episodes per season. When well crafted, these become powerful forces for binge-watching.
Beware of what you are subjecting yourself to when you choose to check out the first episode of season 1. The best of these series build up amazing energy toward the cliff-hanging end of each individual episode such that the urge to watch the next installment is overwhelming.
It becomes a real test of patience. Do you sacrifice another hour of other things that should be getting attention to satisfy that longing to find out what happens next? You would be forced to if it was only broadcast over the airwaves one day per week. That’s not how it works anymore.
We have the entire season of episodes readily available to stream online, one after the other, or a boxed set of all the seasons can be purchased on DVDs if you are still into 2018 technology.
That’s what we ended up doing when we found ourselves addicted to “Longmire.” We streamed the first few episodes when we were up at the lake. We wanted to continue when we returned home but we don’t have enough bandwidth to stream video so we rented DVDs through the mail.
At the completion of the first season, there was a wait to get season 2 so we solved that by purchasing all six seasons to be delivered the next day.
Take that, patience.
Now we’ve stumbled upon the British crime drama, “Broadchurch” from 2013-2017. Saw the first episodes up at the lake. (When will I learn.) When the story ruthlessly tugged at both Cyndie and me on our first day back home, we found the DVDs could be rented from our online account. The thing was, though, we already had two other movies in the queue that were already being (slowly) mailed to us.
We would have to wait. That takes patience.
Checking our bandwidth usage, it looked like we could commit to streaming one episode to tide us over. Oh, but that cliff-hanger. You can’t just stream one.
Last night I ended up deleting the two discs from our queue that would have completed the season because the urge to binge was stronger than the will power to be patient.
It appears we might have our speed throttled by our ISP before the month ends on our account in 16 days.
At least there is good news for us and our powerlessness over directors who create addictive episodic series. Our electricity coop is currently in the process of installing fiber-optic high-speed connectivity along our rural roads.
Waiting for them to get service to our house has been testing our patience since last September.
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Just Lookin’
In avoidance of extending our exposure to more of the daily war news than necessary, I turned to surfing reddit on my phone to pass some time while digesting my dinner. As is the norm, scrolling past the first few posts brought up the featured live feed of the moment. I usually scroll past these with barely a glance, always with the sound muted.
However, I was shocked to discover I knew the person who showed up on the screen this time. Giving out a shout, I hustled down the stairs to show Cyndie.
“It’s Julian! Julian’s on the… he’s drumming on the… on Reddit’s live feed!” I struggled to blurt out.
How’s that for timing? My son was broadcasting a live session of playing his electronic drum set in video game fashion similar to the classic “Guitar Hero” while a synchronized LED light show illuminated the background, and I just happened to stumble upon it.
It was wonderful serendipity that I logged in at that very moment and a special treat to get to see his performance was also being watched by over 20-thousand others around the world.
You ROCK, Julian!
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More Melting
A local meteorologist on the radio pointed out the previous two days were our first pair of consecutive days of temperatures in the 40s (F) since December when we experienced a tornado in the area. Two days of melting is visibly changing our snowscape.
As we made our way around the north loop trail yesterday, I found it interesting that no old footprints were apparent along the pathway, yet the trail we repeatedly walk was clearly outlined.
I suspect that blowing snow had filled the path while we were up at the lake over the weekend and now it’s all being glazed level with the surrounding snowpack. We trudged through it seconds after I took that picture, taking the first steps toward reestablishing our typical packed trail.
The first week of March is predicted to bring us melting temperatures during the days and several chances for a mix of precipitation.
We noticed yesterday afternoon that the horses are starting to shed a little bit of their winter coat. The prospect of wet precipitation and near-freezing temperatures is an unwelcome combination when it comes to horses. As is our normal practice, we have closed some gates to separate the herd into two groups of two so there will be less competition over access to the protection of the barn overhang.
After the anxiety they showed the last time we moved them into stalls in the barn, I am not as quick to choose that option for keeping them dry. We are going to make the overhang as available as possible and leave it up to them to take advantage of it, or not.
You know the old saying… “You can provide a horse some shelter from the rain, but you can’t make him (or her, or them) use it.”
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Driving Home
In a rare change of routine for a weekend at the lake, we stayed overnight Sunday and drove home yesterday a little before noon. Why? Basically, because we could, although the added benefit of avoiding typical Sunday traffic returning to the Twin Cities was a welcome bonus.
It was a bit of a surprise to see a new inch of snow had fallen while we were gone. By the time we got home, the temperature had climbed into the 40s (F) and the snowpack was morphing from individual flakes into one smooth slushy.
Some short-legged critter left a trail of footprints in the deep snow by our labyrinth. In stark contrast to the mini-labyrinth among the trees at the lake, our circuit at home hasn’t been walked for months, making the path mostly invisible beneath the white covering.
Around the corner, we found an even more interesting pattern melted into the snow in the shadow of the fence of the back pasture.
Somehow, the lines of the wires were clearly reflected on the surface of the snow. I’m guessing it had to do with the angle of the moving sun aligning just right with the wires as it made its way across the sky.
By the time we got there, the sun was being obscured by a rather distinct change of cloud cover in the sky.
Near the bottom of that image, tiny specks of what happens to be our four horses can be seen hanging out in one of their favorite areas of our fields. As we made the last turn toward the barn, they started their journey up to the overhang for the afternoon feeding.
We were happy to find things in good order after a long weekend of care by the very capable horse person Cyndie found to cover for us when we are gone.
It was a wonderful weekend away, but as always, we are really glad to be home again.
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Messy
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I got distracted from my reality
for a second last night
but it lasted for more than just one second
and had everything to do
with life in the whole world
happening all the time
messy
brilliant
wasted on the thankless
tragic beyond belief
a cold draft on the outside of my bare arm
an unexpected metaphoric slap in the face
defying all logic
at the time in that space
in this place
where it is gorgeous
peaceful
wild in multiple ways
natural world happenings
in vivid contrast
to unnatural accomplishments
of humankind
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Chasing Racers
There’s an app for that. Family support for race participants becomes a sport in itself. One of the first challenges is interpreting event information provided by the organizers. Then there is the physical exertion of arriving at the correct spot at the precise moment to see specific racers along a 50-kilometer freestyle course. Having an app to show a skier’s progress is a helpful tool, but only part of the information needed in the role of spectator/support people.
Yesterday’s adventure began with the challenge of finding where skiers can be dropped off to catch a shuttle bus with time to spare to reach the starting point of the American Birkebeiner. Oft referred to as “The Birkie,” this is North America’s largest cross-country ski marathon and part of the worldloppet circuit of over 20 international ski marathons and it happens practically in the back yard of our lake place getaway.
When we got to town, taking the back route to dodge a suspected road closure (that turned out to be not closed) there was no obvious sign of where to find a skier drop off for the shuttle. We decided to make the drive to the race start ourselves. Knowing the route to Cable, WI was no problem but reaching the start required a lot of luck and a little bravado. As we got close, we found busses and followed one past a sign that said “no entry.”
Our heroes, Ella W., and Ellie G. hopped out as the traffic volunteer was instructing us we couldn’t park there. Luckily, we had no intention of parking. We drove back to the house and watched the race progress on a live online feed.
When the time looked right, we drove to an access point somewhere near the middle of the race.
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Our intrepid first-time marathon skiers were in fine spirits and good form which was a wonderful thing to see for those who love them and are cheering from the sidelines. Once again, we headed back to the comfort of the house and some lunch while the athletes were outside pushing their limits in the elements.
With the app offering hints of their progress, we headed out again, this time in two cars so we could give them a ride back after the finish. Our first challenge was to find a place to park in the small town of Hayward where the population had expanded 20-fold for the weekend.
Since our first-timers Ella and Ellie started in the last wave of the race, a good percentage of people were already done and leaving so parking spots were opening up at random. We arrived on Main Street with time to scout out the scene and took up a position that unfortunately offered primarily shadowed views.
Regardless, we hollered excitedly at the sight of the girls taking their finishing strides.
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They had enough skiing for the day, that’s for sure. Gauging their assessment in the immediate moment of fatigue leaves room for interpretation. No matter what, it was a heck of an accomplishment for them. Endurance sports are not for everyone, but it is an honor to witness their achievements in person and live vicariously through their impressive efforts.
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Feels Wintery
Today is the American Birkebeiner race day and we’ve learned the two main mid-race access points nearest our place are closed to traffic. We plan to drop off the two first-time Birkie skiers in Hayward shortly and they will ride a shuttle bus to the start. We will come back and hang out until the time we expect them to finish and then we will drive to town to join the throngs cheering skiers along.
The house on the lake gave us a little surprise when Cyndie and I arrived Thursday in the form of a puddle on the center island in the kitchen for which we couldn’t figure out the source. Yesterday morning, as the sun got high enough to melt the snow on the deck, a dripping began from the ceiling in the kitchen.
We had an ice dam on the roof of epic proportions. Luckily, the crew that does the caretaking up here responded swiftly and took on the risky job of working on the roof to clear the ice.
With that problem tended to we felt free to head out for a snowshoe trek with Delilah, quickly discovering the snow was so deep in the woods that Delilah could hardly make it through.
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After a short distance, we turned around and took advantage of our trail to let her move with a little more ease. We needed to consult photographs of the labyrinth we made last fall to figure out where it was located, but once we figured it out, it was pretty easy to plod the path.
It will provide a nice recovery exercise tomorrow for our racers who are skiing a distance today far greater than any they’ve done thus far.
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Relative Something 