Tag Archives: ice

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freeze

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: thaw.

I walked through Kai Tai Nature Park during the snow last month. Usually there are lots of ducks, sometimes geese, red wing blackbirds and a blue heron or eagle. This is taken with a zoom. The ducks were hiding out and the seagulls standing rather forlornly on the ice, waiting for the thaw.

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door to blue

For Norm2.0’s Thursday doors.

This is the arched entry from my house. I was trying to capture the blues in the snow on Monday as the evening light dimmed. It’s time I photographed a lot more of my local doors, since Port Townsend has many building built from 1860-1880. Not my house, it’s from 1929. More doors to follow soon.

evening light looking through arch at a snow covered yard, all tones of blue.
archway in the evening, with a hanging birdbath and snow on a yard, all blue light
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snow day

I am having a snow day. It snowed yesterday! Schools are closed and the roads are ice and it was 25 degrees when I walked into clinic. Clinic is cold and power and phones and computers are all out.

Now I have power back but internet is iffy. I have cancelled today’s patient. Some are 45 minutes or an hour away on good roads! We only have an inch of snow but the people north of me are reporting 6-8 inches. I have called people about tomorrow as well. Clinic will proceed if we have power and heat, but the people an hour away are cancelling. The weather forecast is that it will freeze at night all week, which is unusual here.

I am less than a mile from clinic and have ski clothes, so I should be able to get in unless we have an ice storm. We have paper files for back up so I could find phone numbers even with the power out. All except one new patient and now I’ve tracked that one down. We also have a battery lantern because the bathroom is really really dark with the power out. No windows.

I took the photograph last night. My ornamental plums were budding. I don’t know how happy they will be with a week of freezing weather!

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ski trip

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dirt.

What worries a skier about the opening photograph?

Yesterday the introverted thinker and I went water skiing. On Mount Baker. It rained the whole time. Cold! And the introverted thinker’s knee hurt. We bagged it once I had ice puddles in my ski boots and could squeeze a stream out of my ski gloves.

On the very first lift ride, I realized that my wrist pocket was unzipped. Cash was still in there but the car key wasn’t. We skied down and I checked each place I’d been. No key. We got back on the lift and watched. There were a lot of small black specks. We discussed how much fun it would be to wait for AAA on the top of the mountain.

We skied down, going very slowly right under the lift.

FOUND IT!

Whew. After that neither of us whined. We skied until we were soaked. Her knee was being uncooperative and she was skiing warily. I couldn’t wear goggles because then my glasses fogged too much. Neither of us could see much through the rain. We went up a higher lift and then it was heavy wet slushy snowing. Then we really couldn’t see. Both nearly crashed skiing by proprioception, when a dip was invisible. I stopped at a sign and then fell backwards, visual cues just weren’t working for balance. Unhurt.

And what does this have to do with dirt? I started skiing at age 9 on the east coast, in upstate New York. We would go from Johnson City and meet my uncle and cousins at the small Labrador Mountain ski area. It was a family area. The snow was often awful. We skiied on ice, slush and dirt. Patches of dirt would show through and we learned to avoid them and avoid the rocks. The first time I skiied powder in Colorado I was mystified: I didn’t know how to ski it. But slush on top of hardpacked moguls? No problem.

So skiing Baker put me back to my tweens. The conditions were so familiar. My body was so comfortable with really crappy snow. The ungroomed parts had so much water on top that skis practically stopped. If I had been dressed in foul weather gear I could have skied most of the day.

But soaking wet is another matter. We turned in the skis and ate a late lunch. Happily used the car key to get dry clothes. Changed and drove back to Bellingham. We had a fabulous dinner looking out over the bay with a wonderful sunset.

Bellingham Bay with yellow, orange, pink and blue sunset over islands.
dinner and a sunset

Blessings all.

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Container dream

I dream I am at a concert in a park. Or some very big event. With my significant other. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining, the grass is green, there are rolling hills and trees. People are arriving.

There is a gasp of horror. There is a large box, like the hold of a ship. We hurry to look in: there are three open containers down inside, tops removed. They are full of children. Smuggled? Immigrants? The containers are surrounded by water. My significant other and I drop our things and climb down the long hold ladder into the water, which is cold, filthy, and comes up to my thighs. I’ve kicked off my sandals. We are wading to the containers. An ICE agent in a black uniform, bullet proof vest, belt with tools and guns, and riot helmet, blocks me and says, “You have to be wearing shoes to help.” He is handing out plastic stretchers. He can’t see my feet. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and my feet could get cut, but this is probably sewage and dangerous even with shoes. We should really be in hazmat gear but the kids could be dying. I just look at him, silent, and he hands me a stretcher.

Enough people have come forward, into the water, that all the kids have been placed in one of the containers. None of them are dead. They are being lifted out one by one, to ambulances. Now the hold is surrounded by rubberneckers. I climb out and find my purse and camera and shoes. I am grateful no opportunist has stolen them. The ICE agents are telling people to back off and give them room to work. The news crews are there and a Washington State politician says, “This is Washington State, we will take care of these children, we will not see them separated and incarcerated, I will see that they are returned to their parents.” Good luck, I think, but at least there are tons of witnesses and cameras and news crews.

I need to find somewhere to scrub my legs down with soap and to find my significant other. It’s getting more crowded.

I wake up.

And what I notice is that the water did not stink and was not full of lumps of floating excrement. As I wake I hope that I won’t catch something horrible and die….usually my dreams have full sound, color and smells too. I wonder where the children were from, and why, and whether they had some sort of sanitation….