During The Winter I Am Content

This past couple of weeks have been a blur of touching base with many people I have met professionally along the way over the past eleven months.

Today was another one of those days, and on the way back from a restaurant and on the way to a store I pulled off Glacier Highway for a few minutes, stopping to take pictures of my favorite abandoned little wooden shack.

I am curious to know the history of this small building.

It is located in a field right along the highway half way between the Valley and Auke Bay.

It is also located close to "The Trail Next To Safeway", so is surrounded by now snow-capped mountains.

I pulled off the highway onto a side road - the same road I pulled onto a few months ago when I photographed this little building in the fall.

At that time it was surrounded by many shades of brown and gold.

Today it was surrounded by snow. 

Lots of snow................

It looks in these pictures like this cabin is isolated.

Sitting in the back country somewhere in the mountains, alone and abandoned and without inhabitants.

It is not isolated.

I pass it every day, twice a day, on the way to work.

I look at it in passing every day but today, looking at these pictures, it took on a different feel for me.

Beautiful.  Quiet.  Solitary............

During the winter I am content--or try to think I am--to make my head-quarters in town

and to get fresh air and a broader outlook at intervals that are frequent, but still at intervals.

Perhaps the walk or drive out to the frozen lake among the hills for an afternoon's skating is

the more keenly relished because of a busy week elsewhere. For all practical purposes nature is

at a standstill. . . . there is a wonderful joy in leaving behind the noisy city streets and starting out

along the white road that leads across the hills. With each breath of the sharp, reviving air

one seems to inhale new life. A peace as evident as the sunshine on the fields takes possession

of one's inner being. The trivial cares which fretted like a swarm of mosquitoes are driven away

by the first sweep of wind that comes straight from the mountains. . . . The intense silence

that broods over the snow-bound land is a conscious blessing. The deep blue of the sky and

the purple shadows cast by the trees and plants are a feast to the eye. The crunch of the snow-rind

beneath our feet and the varied hum of the telegraph wires overhead are music to our ears.

Frances Theodora Parsons