A Long Walk On A Grey Day - Part 1

 As I was driving home from the library a couple of days ago it started to snow heavily.

The biggest snow flakes I had seen in a long time.

LC took some these pictures close to home.

It snowed all afternoon, all evening and into the night, and when we woke up yesterday morning we were greeted by an unexpected but very welcome Winter Wonderland.............

 

 The outside of the house that we are renting.

Actually it is more like a small cabin.

But it has a fireplace, new appliances and fixtures, room enough for two adults and a dog, plenty of storage buildings (thank goodness because we still have a lot of boxes in the storage unit we rented upon our arrival in Cody and they still need to be moved and sorted through), a nice old lady and nice horses on the property.

We badly need shelves and dressers but will get those in time.

Most importantly though it has quiet, open space and beautiful mountains.

My Mountain Boy and I both need that and we have found it here.

It won't be forever, but for now this house fits..........

 Yesterday morning LC and I stood on the porch in front of the house, smiled and laughed at the snow and the mild temperatures and talked about how to spend a grey snowy day.

He wanted to go to a gun show in Powell which is a very nice and clean town about 20 miles from Cody.

I stood on the porch drinking coffee - wearing flannel pajamas and LCs' sneakers and an old jacket and looked out over the snow covered fields and mountains around me.

I did not want to go to a gun show.  

I wanted to be outside.

And so it was agreed that we would both fly solo yesterday - my Mountain Boy was headed to Powell and I would take Jamie for a long walk in snowy fields and muddy back roads close to the house...........

A look at the wagon in the front yard coated in snow.

I love this wagon............

 I showed LC the pictures I took during my walk when he got home from the gun show yesterday afternoon.

Having been raised on a farm he could (and did) easily rattle off what each piece of farm machinery was that I had photographed during my walk.

Writing this blog has occasionally highlighted just how much I don't know about so many things.

In Juneau that short-coming was often about boats and wild life.

In this case it is farm equipment.

Regardless - this black piece, with its beautiful lines, stood out against the snow.............

 Everywhere you look in this area there are horses.

Often during my walk yesterday I would turn to look at something and be surprised to see horses unexpectedly watching my every move.

I have seen many of them while driving by on the way to and from the house.

But yesterday, while on foot with my dog, I really had an opportunity to study them and to enjoy them.

They are beautiful.  Strong.  Curious.  Cautious.

Horses are yet one more thing I know little about.

I have ridden only two or three times in my entire life and that was many years ago.

My experience being out in nature in Juneau really highlighted how little I had seen while adventure racing.

I loved racing, but I spent 6 years training and racing and seeing very little of what was around me.

Always thinking about speed or endurance or when to sleep or when to eat or where the next check point was.

Looking for a specific ridge line or break in the trail or inlet on the lake.

Racing all over the eastern half of the country in state parks, federal forests, conservation areas.  And remembering almost nothing about them aside from always moving forward no matter what.

So now I walk and look at horses.

And that is OK.............

 One of my favorite pictures from yesterday.

With all the snow and clouds and grey it was very hard to see what I was actually taking a picture of, and I spent most of the day shooting blind.

Often I was just doing the point-and-shoot thing, hoping to capture whatever it was that I wanted to capture.

So I had no idea that Jamie was in this picture until I downloaded it...............

 This place looks stunningly different covered in snow.

And once it all melts things just may soon turn to green instead of the now familiar brown..........

 

 Two more horses that I caught unexpectedly watching me from a hill-top..........

 

 

 

 As I walked Jamie patiently waited for me while I snapped huge numbers of pictures, and as Jamie walked I patiently waited for her while she marked her territory every 100 yards and sniffed every single sage brush along the sides of the road................

 And as I walked I stewed about my youngest son who is now talking about traveling out to Regina or Edmonton because he cannot find a job in New Brunswick (a situation that has remained consistent since even before I lived in NB - even 20 years ago people I knew could only find work through the summers and collected unemployment insurance through the winters).

He got into an argument with his brother in Tennessee, sounds cold and indifferent to me on the phone when I talk to him and I don't know what the hell his deal is.

I will continue to stew.  Continue to stay in touch with him.  Continue to try and figure out what the hell his deal is...........

 During my walk yesterday I saw icons of the west in people's yards just as I have many times since arriving in Cody - wagons, antlers, horse and elk and deer and bear symbols, horse trailers.

They are all great fun.

During the summer there are re-enactments of gun fights held daily for the tourists in town.

Also during the busy tourist season Cody holds a daily rodeo.  I have never been to a rodeo before.

Concerts in the park, cowboy art shows, gun shows, hot air balloon festival.  

Yellowstone opens in May.  The Buffalo Bill Dam will open to visitors also in May.

I have been researching the area and there is so much to do in both Cody and other surrounding towns that I can hardly wait..............

 

 These two large birds live in the field immediately adjacent to the barn above.

They also co-exist well with large herds of black tail deer that graze and bed down regularly in this same field.

I do not know what these birds are.  

LC thinks they may be whooping cranes (and we saw two similar looking birds out in a field in South Fork not long ago that made a strange "whooping" noise), but the pictures I have seen show whooping cranes to be white

I have never seen these gentle and slow moving birds fly and they appear to be permanent residents of this field...........

 Clouds and ground beginning to mesh with each other.

My walk started off in mild temperatures and calm winds.

By the time I reached this place the weather was getting colder and the skies were looking more and more threatening.

I had only walked about a mile by this point though, and was not ready to head back.

I looked at the sky in front of me, looked at the sky west towards Yellowstone, and continued on.

The direction of the prevailing winds is very obvious in this picture.

Wide open fields and nothing to buffer what are sometimes crazy-strong winds.

A lovely horse farm.............

 

 

 A look back the way I had come.

At the end of the road I turned left and contentedly continued my quiet walk, with my happy Point Dog leading the way as usual..........

 Cody is not only a horse town, it is also a rodeo town.

And pictures and statues just like this one can be seen everywhere.

We even have a cowboy riding a bucking bronco on our shiny new Wyoming licence plates.............

http://www.alpca.org/faq/bronco/

 

 

 

 

 After walking and wandering and picture taking for another 20 minutes or so Jamie and I turned down yet one more lane.

The dirt lane had the word "creek" in the name, so I was hopeful that we would eventually run into water. 

This type of fence, in addition to the normal wire fences, is very common here in Wyoming...........

 

 

 I took this picture as I was approaching the robin, but he flew off before I had the chance to zoom my camera in any further...........

 James and I were not quite half way through our walk by this time, and I was enjoying the little adventure immensely.

The scenery was beautiful.

So was the quiet.

The horses, each and every time, made me smile inwardly.

More pictures to follow............