Drove up to Glen Alps with the dogs yesterday. Ten minutes from home. Happy Wife wanted to check on the snow condition for crust skiing, which was evidently superb, I’m sure I heard the word divine used. She’s headed back there today with Lucy. Lacking grace on skis, both Harry and I will go elsewhere in the mountains for a hearty walk. Another sensational bluesky day today, like yesterday:
See that saddle-shaped pass way back there? That’s Powerline Pass. By late spring most of the snow here will have melted, although in a typical year some will linger at the top of the pass through June, but only a little, and then you can mountain bike from where Happy Wife is standing all the way back to the pass, do a hike-a-bike over the top (it’s pretty steep), and then descend the backside of the mountain on a very fun (though partly treacherous) trail that eventually spills out on the highway about 20 miles south of Anchorage. Hard core dudes ride the road back to Anchorage, as a friend and I did years ago. Dumpy old men in their 50s opt for a bar stool at the Brown Bear saloon and congratulate themselves behind a beer or three while they wait for a spouse to arrive with the car.
Found an old photograph of me and my good friend Fritz the day we did that ride together. Must be at least twenty years ago now. We were just starting up toward the pass on the hike-a-bike, kicking toe holds in the snow as we went. Funny, I was sportin’ a cookie duster back then. He and I did some fun rides together in those days. I very much wish he hadn’t died in ’01, shortly after reinventing himself and earning his MD in his fifties. Back then he and I were geophysicists with BIG oil. I remember being pretty incredulous when he told me he’d decided to go to medical school, “Who goes back to school in their forties?”
I’ll staple the photo back on the wall in the garage where I found it, I like to look at it from time to time when I’m futzing around out there. It has always been this way, memory fastens us to the past and the future unfurls unknown.