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Susan Skiing Through Saturday Snow Day (Photo: Geo Davis)
No progress on the icehouse project today. None. By design. And by the benevolence of mother nature. Today we celebrated a Saturday snow day!
Carley and Geo on Saturday Snow Day (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Although Saturdays and Sundays are usually rest days for most people, our amazing team has worked through weekends and days-off for months in order to ensure forward motion seven days a week (with very few exceptions and holidays and extreme weather days) ever since this project got off the ground last fall. But today was a planned pause. To reboot. And to accommodate a major March blizzard.
Carley at Library Brook on Snow Day (Photo: Geo Davis)
So I share with you a few snapshots from a day that was snowing when we awoke and that’s still snowing as we head off to dinner.
Carley on Saturday Snow Day (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
These first photos were taken during our late morning cross-country ski outing through Rosslyn’s back fields and forest. Overcast, snowy wonderland. These last two photos were taken earlier, easing into the snowy morning with Carley, Mud/WTR in hand, observing our avian neighbors breakfasting.
Cardinals on Snow Day (Photo: Geo Davis)
Although primarily intended for songbirds, Rosslyn’s bird feeders also welcome enthusiastic opportunists like the mallards.
What is the cross-country skiing equivalent of schussing down a powdery piste? If it exists — some etymologically Nordic, onomatopoeicly swooshy reference for scissoring smoothly across a snowy meadow or through a snowy forrest — I could sneak it into today’s outing. But I’d be waxing poetic. Projecting fantasy onto a considerably stickier cross-country skiing experience.
Cross-Country Skiing Library Brook Trail (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Don’t get me wrong. Venturing out into Rosslyn’s backland with Susan this afternoon for some slippery sliding and gliding was the perfect reentry. Especially on a Monday. Decadent!
Cross-Country Skiing Beaver Meadow (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
But the new fallen snow was far from powdery. Perfect snowball weather. But the only snowballs we’re those clinging to Carley’s undercarriage as she raced across fields investigating animal tracks. The temperate was week above freezing which made for a highly agreeable jaunt, but the snow adhered to the bottoms of our skis, clumping, slowing out progress.
Carley Criss-Crossing Ski Tracks (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Sticky snow. Overcast skies. And yet it was perfect. My bride, my dog, and time taken to tour Rosslyn’s wilder side while cross-country skiing. Perfection!
Back for another nival homecoming. Fluttering flurries obscuring sunset, muting day to night, ground mounding, rounding with fresh fallen snow. The sound of no sound, snowflakes silencing, softening contours, and settling scores. Slumber’s siren song swaddled in silver, swirling and whirling, mesmerizing me, mesmerizing us until tomorrow.
Another Nival Homecoming (Photo: Geo Davis)
Nival?!?!
There aren’t too many opportunities to nudge “nival” into conversation even in this northern wonderland. But as a language romantic often employing Spanish for my day-to-day communication, the word “nieve” kept burbling to the surface. In English, naval is about as close as we get, so, it was simply irresistible. Or perhaps the snowy sirens are to blame.
That said, it’s worth noting that naval is more metaphorically than literally appropriate in this context. Despite the fact that midwinter — and, yes, late February is still midwinter along the Adirondack Coast — may suggest perpetual snow and ice, spring is only a month (or two) away. Snow and ice will yield, grass will green, snowdrops and hyacinth and daffodils and jonquils (Narcissus jonquilla) will once again awaken springtime from her beauty sleep…
More. Snow. Ahead… (Source: Apple Weather)
And better yet, the snow continues to fall. Certainly cross-country skiing will be woven into tomorrow’s itinerary between icehouse rehab meetings and hands-on problem solving, carpentry, etc. Perhaps even some sunshine to enjoy the swoosh and glide of a mud-day skiing adventure.
Snow Falling on Homecoming: January 25, 2023 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Today’s ferry ride from Charlotte to Essex — with snow falling on homecoming — tasted bittersweet if vaguely familiar. There was a wellspring of anticipation upon returning to inspect firsthand the team’s progress on the icehouse rehab, boathouse gangway, and some painting and tiling maintenance inside our home. There was also the poignant pique of a visit precipitated not by plan or passion but by infelicitous necessity.
The circumstances of my sojourn need no airing now since, perhaps, the “better part of valor is discretion“. So let’s skip the preamble and fast forward to the purely positive, right?
The cold, blustery ferry ride. The on-again, off-again frenzies of flurries pointillistic-pixelating the watery panorama, the approach to Essex, the desaturated vision of Rosslyn’s boathouse, the almost empty ferry queue, and the entirely empty roadway home.
Hhhmmm… Still shy of the purely positive, but hold tight. It’s coming.
Snow Falling on Cedar Shingles: January 16, 2014 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Snow Falling on Cedar Shingles
That blue-gray veiled waterfront snapshot dates from a post I shared on January 16, 2014. Just over nine years ago. And the title, “Snow Falling on Cedar Shingles“, remanifested in muddled facsimile (snow falling on hemlocks…) as I pulled in the driveway, observing the row of new evergreens planted along the norther edge of the front yard last spring/summer. (Which reminds me, I’ve still not posted those updates. Best get on with it before the one-year anniversary!)
The photo bears a close similarity with today, and this drift of words struck me as uncanny, sort of the mirrored reflection of my sentiments upon arriving today.
A parting glimpse of the boathouse blurred beyond veil of soggy snowflakes. Southwestern sirens are calling me away — by ferry, airplane and rental jalopy — so I leave the homestead in the able care of my bride and my dog for a few days. I’m willing deep drifts of powdery snow upon my return! (Source: Snow Falling on Cedar Shingles)
And this, fair reader, is where the positive uptick begins.
Another whirlwind visit, but rather than a whirlwind away in Santa Fe, it was to be a whirlwind in Essex. I took note of that. Just shy of a decade; a not-so-subtle shift. And then there was that twin allusion to the recently re-roofed icehouse, long since silver-foxed, and to David Guterson’s novel which had moved me then but has slowly vanished like the ferry’s wake resolving back into the surface of the lake. And that transformation from cedars, actually American arborvitae (known locally as “cedars” or “white cedars”) to hemlocks resonated as well.
Snow Falling on Hemlocks
Remembering the micropoem with macropotence. Superpowers.
There was no crow today to catalyze my “change of mood”. There were birds at the bird feeders beside the deck and beneath the leafless gingko tree. And several mallards retrieving fallen birdseed from the snow beneath the feeders. And the new row of hemlocks, similar to the old row of hemlocks on the other side of the property, looked green black beneath their frosted cloaks. But it wasn’t the songbirds, the mallards, or the hemlocks that “saved some part / Of a day I had rued.”
Snow Falling on Homecoming: January 25, 2023 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Snow Falling on the Icehouse
It was gathering with Tony and Peter and Steve inside the icehouse, taking in the awesome transformation from dirt floored shell of a utility building to micro mansion. A soaring one-room wonderland with a loft that thrills the 10-year old still overmuch alive in me. A barn loft with a handsome, homey stair rather than a ladder. A stout rebuild with an airy energy. An icehouse warm against the frosty afternoon despite the fact that no heat was running. A small scale sanctuary for writing and reading and creating the day away.
After meeting with the members of the team on hand I wandered, cold, and snow capping my hat and shoulders around and around, studying sightlines, editing hardscape and landscape plans, evolving furniture plans. After several months away, inspecting and and guiding and absorbing the progress from a digital distance that distorts the approximately 2,000 miles of reality jam-packed between me and the actual timbers and window openings and stair landing that have risen in the empty volume I left behind in September. Virtual reality is not reality. But walking and touching and rapping my knuckles and eyeballing alignments and sitting in a folding chair exactly where my desk chair will be several months from now,…
Snow Falling on Homecoming
This is the uptick. Where I felt tormented and conflicted in recent days, even as the ferry glided across the chilly lake, I now feel swollen with optimism. And underpinning the optimism is profound pride and gratitude for the work that has been completed and to the team who made this possible. Thank you Hroth, Pam, Tony, Eric, Matt, Brandon, Ben, Justin, Jarrett, Bob, Phil, Zack, David, Steve, Kevin, and everyone else I’m inadvertently overlooking. Your hard work and perseverance have begun to transform a vision into a building — an environment for creativity and productivity and entertainment — worthy of the handsome heritage that this historic property deserves. Susan and I are profoundly grateful to you all.
Sometimes meteorologists get it right. And Rosslyn’s winter wonderland 2019 just might become Exhibit A in the Meteo Defense column. Thank you, snow gods!
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: P.M.)
Winter storm warnings wander across our radar often enough this time of year that we become a little meteorology skeptical. Not cynical. Just suspicious that promised snowstorms won’t quite measure up to the hype. Sort of a wait-and-see approach to meteorological forecasting…
But this winter storm was different!
With 20″-24″ of magnificent white stuff blanketing Rosslyn, it’s proof positive that sometimes their predictions are spot on.
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn’s front entrance buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn’s carriage barn and ice house buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn’s “backside” buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn’s boathouse buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Winter Wonderland 2019: Essex ferry approaching Rosslyn’s boathouse. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Winter Wonderland 2019: Rosslyn’s stone walls buried in 20-24″ of fresh snow. (Credit: R. P. Murphy)
Spectacular, right? This snowfall reminds me of the snowfalls I remember from my Adirondack childhood in the 1970s and 1980s. Such massive mounds of powdery bliss! I sometimes wonder if my memory has been kidnapped by my imagination, but this winter wonderland is proof that epic snowfalls are real. And magnificent. Time to go outside and play.
[pullquote]Griffin “polar bear plunges” in 35° Lake Champlain… mid-winter swimming bliss![/pullquote]
Griffin, our now almost nine year old Labrador Retriever, was thrilled with to chase some throw-toys in the chilly lake today despite the fact that it’s February 19 and the water temperature is exactly three days above freezing… 35° of mid-winter swimming bliss!
Here’s a fuzzy but joyful glimpse into one of about a dozen of Griffin’s “polar bear plunges”.
We just returned to Essex and were quite excited about the recent snowfall. Last year’s virtually snowless winter was a bummer. No skiing in winter followed by alarmingly low lake levels due to unusually low levels of spring melt and runoff. Up until the last couple of weeks this winter has been similarly snow-free, so having a chance to spend the morning cross country skiing around Rosslyn’s woods, trails, and meadows with my bride and dog was a welcome change. And the perfect warm-up for Griffin’s February swim…
A parting glimpse of the boathouse blurred beyond veil of soggy snowflakes. Southwestern sirens are calling me away — by ferry, airplane and rental jalopy — so I leave the homestead in the able care of my bride and my dog for a few days. I’m willing deep drifts of powdery snow upon my return!
By the way, if “snow falling on cedar…” rings a bell, there’s a reason why: an amazing novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson. Read it. You won’t regret it. But don’t waste too much time trying to decipher the similarity between the title I used for this snapshot and Guterson’s. No hidden meaning. Just a descriptive reference to Rosslyn’s boathouse roof which received a new shingle roof a couple of summers ago.
With spring just around the corner, Mother Nature decided to blast us one last time. And despite feeling oh-so-very ready for spring, we were thrilled to have another few days of prime Adirondack skiing. Let’s hope this was winter’s last hurrah!
Nor’easter Neige: boathouse, February 4, 2021 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Nor’easter delivered 10-12” of fluffy powder to our stretch of the Adirondack Coast, and it sure looks postcard perfect. Or, almost postcard perfect…
Any idea what’s just shy of midwinter Adirondack Coast perfection? Look at the water beyond the boathouse.
It’s February and Lake Champlain is still wide open. No ice. It seems that this has increasingly become the new normal. Open water in February. It certainly does challenge skaters!
Nor’easter Neige: carriage barn and icehouse, February 4, 2021 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
But, of course, rotating 180° and looking West the unfrozen lake vanishes and winter wonderland is assured. Time to strap on hbd cross-country skis and head out to Rosslyn’s fields and forests. Come along!
In recent years December has given us our first real blast of winter. A premature blast usually because early December snows have usually melted by Christmas…
December 2014 Raptors
Early in December 2014 I walked Rosslyn’s woods and meadows to make sure our cross-country ski trails were clear of trees and brush. The good news was that with a little maintenance everything was ready for our first snowfall.
[pullquote]Perhaps you can help identify the hawk and owl species?[/pullquote]
The even better news was that I encountered two handsome raptors at close range. Near the beginning of my walk a hawk allowed me to approach and photograph him from directly beneath the limb where he sat. Later in the afternoon an owl was no more than fifteen feet from me when I spied him. He too sat patiently and allowed me to snap photos. Unfortunately the camera in my mobile phone offers only a hint of the grandeur of this birds of prey.
Perhaps you can help identify the hawk and owl species?
Enormous hawk hunting in Rosslyn’s back meadows.
Enormous hawk hunting in Rosslyn’s back meadows.
Owl perched quietly in Rosslyn’s Hickory Hillock.
Owl perched quietly in Rosslyn’s Hickory Hillock.
December 2014 Snow
And then the snow arrived. On the 10th of December 2014 we had our first real taste of collecting snow (as opposed to flurries that melt once they land.)
Another curious happening. The Essex-Charlotte ferry seemed to have stalled in front of Rosslyn boathouse. (Can you spot it in the photos?) It drifted for an eerily long time, so close to the boathouse that I grew concerned. At last it managed to rumble off to the Essex ferry dock.
Essex-Charlotte ferry adrift perilously close to Rosslyn boathouse on 10 December 2014.
Essex-Charlotte ferry adrift perilously close to Rosslyn boathouse on 10 December 2014.
Snow, Snow, Snow: 10 December 2014
Once the snowflakes ceased to fall Rosslyn had been blanketed in over a foot of beautiful snow. Beautiful but super moist and heavy. Unfortunately what looks picturesque in the black and white photo below turned out to be bad news for many of our trees.
Winter started out with a deep, heavy, wet snowfall in early December 2014.
The photographs below tell the less picturesque story of what happens when lots of heavy, wet snow collects. Pretty. But potentially devastating.
Winter started out with a deep, heavy, wet snowfall in early December 2014.
Winter started out with a deep, heavy, wet snowfall in early December 2014 that buried the grill.
Many of our trees were damaged during the early December 2014 snowfall.
Many of our trees were damaged during the early December 2014 snowfall.
Many of our trees were damaged during the early December 2014 snowfall.
Many of our trees were damaged during the early December 2014 snowfall.
But no sense closing on a down note. Instead I’ll wrap up with this wonderful snapshot of Griffin saying goodbye to his snowy home before setting off on a Christmas road trip. Griffin loves snow!
