What's it like working at a ski resort?

Sometimes the walk from the parking lot can be kind of slippery.*

But everyone is in their snow boots so it's really not a problem.



Some walk around the office in their ski boots, especially on powder days. Like today.*

The only complaint about snow is that there isn't enough of it, and when is more coming?

In fact, no one really complains much. No one hates their job, they're all excited to be here. Warm friendly people who wouldn't rather be anywhere else, and are genuinely pleased to meet you.



Some are forced to ski first thing in the morning, before the crowds, to get good pictures for the web (go Andrew!)**

You get to see kids just be kids every day.

Sometimes you bump into Olympians.

When you need a break, the lift is only a few hundred feet away, and the line is always short on weekdays.

The view from the top of the mountain can cure any mid-day slump... which is rare to begin with.

Hot chocolate, hot toddies, hot lattes, hot croisssants, hot soup, hot fireplaces... need I go on?

*Taken this morning
**Taken yesterday

Giving Thanks

This holiday, I am grateful for my family, for friends old and new, for my husband and my dog.

For this new home I have come to know and love.



The bitter cold mornings, iced in sugar crystals.



For the blazing sunlight, with its grand entrance and memorable departure every day.



For the trees who reach for its energy and warmth.



I am grateful for the new abode we will begin to inhabit this week...



Just in time for Christmas.

All kinds of news and newness

Aspens at SolVista, November 10, 2005

Last week it began to snow, and it hasn't stopped much since. This is good news because Winter Park opens for the winter season on Wednesday. Without this snow, opening might have been delayed. Such a delay would have wreaked havoc in Andrew's office, which coincidentally, starting tomorrow, will also be MY {temporary} office.

You see, it seems there is a dire shortage of designers within the company, and since Andrew knew the "perfect person for the job," tomorrow I will begin a 30 to 60 day stint as a Graphic Design Consultant for Intrawest Colorado in the Winter Park office.

You know what this means?

A LOT of skiing.

Joy!

Because not only will I be at the resort every day for the next two months, I will have lunch breaks to take, and early arrivals and other nice opportunities to "get a few runs in," as they say.

This also means some decent cash flow entering our household, relief from dipping into the profits from the sale of our Havertown house. This is good.

And by the way, our household? It is changing. When Andrew arrived here in late August, he got us set up in a rental condo about 30 minutes north of Winter Park. It is a decent, clean place with generous views. But it is pre-furnished with someone else's STUFF, right down to the forks, knives and spoons, and it has not really felt like "home." We have been searching for something to buy since we got here--even before that, really. But we haven't had much luck. The condo has been wearing on us--did I mention that there is a hot tub? Oh but it ain't just any ol' hot tub. It is located IN THE BEDROOM. Not behind closed doors, but about 1 foot away from the bed, with some mirrors on the wall behind it. Um... well, not exactly my kind of hot tub. My kind would be located on a deck outside overlooking mountain scenery. This overlooks our laundry.

So ANYWAY, we got some great news last week when we heard that some new friends of ours were planning to move and leave a lovely little log cabin vacant and available for rent, right in the town of Winter Park. We had been there before for after-bar drinks, and loved it. Now it will be ours to rent beginning December 1st... and it is unfurnished! Finally our familiar, long-missed STUFF can come out of storage and be used again. And happily, we will have more of a "home" in time for Christmas! Even if it isn't really our own, it will do just fine.

So things are settling down after being blown up into drifts like the snow. I can't wait to start nesting.

AND, speaking of nesting, two couples very dear to me and Andrew... my sister Maureen and her husband Vix, as well as our friends Brent and Cheryl, are expecting! This is in addition to some other close friends, Chris and Melissa, who gave me their news in September. There's a whole lot of babies going on. I am so happy for all of them and their families!

So that's the latest from Grand County, Colorado. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Illustration Friday: Night

I haven't posted to Illustration Friday in quite a while, and wouldn't the topic, "Night," just so happen to suit my newest little painting, "October Moonrise," perfectly?

I painted this earlier this morning using a photo I took three weeks ago as I was driving on Hwy 40 towards Fraser. Between the towns of Tabernash and Fraser, a vast cattle and horse ranch flanks the highway on either side. It was about 6:30pm when I started taking pictures of the sunset, which quickly faded to dusk. On the westward side of the road, the sky glowed for a moment in hot pinks, lemons and tangerines until the sun dropped completely behind Byer's Peak. To the East, Byers and the surrounding mountain range cast a cool shadow on the Continental Divide, and at that moment the moon made it's appearance--but gradually, as if on a dimmer switch. The gold fields held onto the pink of the sun for a moment longer, and within nanoseconds, the chill of night fell.

In this valley, no sooner does the sun drop than the temperatures plummet, as any residual warmth is ambushed by the heavy, cold air that was trapped around the snowcaps during daylight. Always have a warm coat with you if you venture out past noon, no matter how persistent the sun seems to be. It WILL get cold.


Before Sunrise, October 30, after an overnight snowfall

The landscape outside our window was particularly eerie the morning before Halloween. I had almost forgotten about it until I downloaded my last batch of photos. Andrew was up before me, and called me out of bed to look at the unusual scene, not unlike a daguerreotype of our usual view. It felt atomic, surreal.


Sunrise, October 30, facing further East

If that wasn't wonderous enough... when I peered as far East as I could, what I saw looked like Heaven. That's the only way I could possibly describe it. This must be what cloud living would look and feel like. I wish I could have gotten a shot of the ethereal scene without any reflections from the windows. It was a bit too cold to venture outside in my pajamas... though in some weird way, it doesn't really look that cold, does it? The light looks warm and inviting, and if I had tiptoed outside, I think I might have been able to walk on air.

When things feel lonely or strange, there is always some unreal natural wonder to marvel at and reassure me that there is no other place like this on Earth. This is why I am right here, right now. I have been craving this kind of inspiration.

New beginnings are weird

Before sunrise, October 28, 7:15am

I won't lie to you... starting life over in a new place is not easy. In the same way that all the newness is exciting, mysterious, breathtaking and refreshing, it is also equally strange, unfamiliar, scary, intimidating and sometimes unwelcome. This past weekend, I missed my home in Havertown alot. Halloween is a big shindig in H-town. We would get 75 trick-or-treaters on our stoop, and I would dress up for them, and we would always run out of candy too early. But we would also have fun drinking wine with our next door neighbors as we handed out whatever candy we had. Some people really would get into it... turning their 1920s tudor or dutch colonial home into a haunted mansion for the evening. You could see strobe lights through cob webs and hear haunted house soundtracks playing throughout the neighborhood. And this year, I missed it.

Halloween itself was uneventful here... Andrew had a bad day at work and wasn't up to attending the festivities at the local Pub. So we had a quiet dinner and watched every scary movie we could find on basic cable. (Was there really a Halloween 4?) Two nights before, we did witness a costume contest at another establishment, and had I known, I might have dressed up.

One spooky thing did occur, on Halloween Eve... aka Mischief Night. Andrew and I were tucked away in bed by 10:30pm. Nights are really quiet here, so it is easy to drift off pretty quickly. Then suddenly, at midnight no less, we heard them... it started with a howoooooooool, followed by a chorus of cackling, shreaking and barking. The sound rose and fell, echoing throughout the valley in a most haunting manner. If I didn't know any better, I would have sworn that a dozen witches flew by our window, up over the roof and above the mountains, laughing about their mischievous deeds of the evening. More believeable would be that a pack of coyotes ran up the hill in front of us, found the sack of trash someone left outside the dumpster in the parking lot, had their way with it, then relished and fought over their spoils. Either way, it was enough to get Andrew and I both out of bed, squinting out the window into the inky darkness around us. BOO!

So that was my Halloween... not quite Havertown style, but just like everything else here, strange, new, not necessarily bad--but different.

And just 2 weeks til ski season begins...!