CUL-DE-SAC

Driving east on Interstate 8 you look at the tops of the mountains until you see a white dusting. In the back of the car we’ve got tire chains and layers of warm clothes.

The snow started to appear at about 3,500 feet. We pulled onto the Sunrise Highway, I put the chains on the front tires, and we rolled slowly uphill until the snow was 6-8 inches deep. If it’s raining and cold in San Diego in December it will be snowing in the mountains.

A new layer of powdery snow is magic no matter where you are. Even in Minneapolis is was sweet to get up in the morning and walk down to the banks of the Mississippi River after a white carpet had fallen overnight and the whole world was so clean, pretty and so quiet.

But when you live in Southern California your love for snow is still greater. I’m lucky to live an hour’s drive from mountains that are more than a mile high, where you can enter that world of winter. Nicholas and Sophie love it best of all.

They complain about living in a place where they see snow so little. Maybe they’ll one day live in a place where it gets down 15 below zero and we’ll see how well they like it. But on New Year’s Eve of 2014 there was no whining and no “you don’t know how good you have” its. We just played in the snow like all the others who came to Laguna Mountain, some shoveling snow into their truck beds so they could bring it into town to show their friends.

The next winter rain we’ll head for higher ground again.

This entry was posted on January 9, 2015 at 2:25 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.