unseasonable

I woke up to a roar late Saturday night as our roof dumped its load of snow into the yard. On Sunday morning, I rose early to feed to dogs so we could get out on the trails and make the most of the last day we'd have to run this week. I prepared their food and got dressed, then I stepped outside to standing water on the porch and meltwater dripping off the roof of the shed and outhouse. The thermometer read nearly forty degrees. I was heartbroken.

Last year, a freak ice storm in mid-November wrecked the trails and it was weeks before they were manageable again. I had told myself over and over that last year's midwinter thaw was an aberration. Apparently I was wrong. It wasn't long before rain began drizzling down onto the little snowpack that had accumulated so far.

Although many of the competitive mushers I know took their teams out to train in the downpour, on the slushy muck the rain was making of the trails, we did not. We are not training for races, and we are still having enough trouble on the trails without heat and muck and standing water to deal with. Instead, we waited for the rain to stop then brought the dogs inside a few at a time to dry out. By evening, the temperature had dropped down again and the misty rain turned back into snow. But it would take a lot more that that evening's dusting to undo the damage the few hours of rain and thaw had done to the snowpack and trails.

Parka and Devilfish waste no time in joining me on the couch.

In the mean time, I packed up to go back to work for another week of regular hours, a long commute and no trail time until the weekend.

Peter wrote an e-mail to a former classmate that night. In it, he typed: "My wife is a musher so I hope for her sake it stays frozen up and we get a foot or so to make up for what we lost and then some.  Her mood is pretty much correlated with the quality of the trails." True words.

Norrin and Xtra chill out together while their coats dry.