Nowhere, Thursday April 11, 2003

Today has been one of those Ranch days. The snow combined with the fog make the house feel as if it is floating in a misty white cloud. That is the reason I titled this page "Nowhere". On days like this you feel as if the outside world has dissolved, leaving a small snug little world that is only 100 feet in diameter. I love days like this. These days happen all the time during the Winter months at the Ranch, but this time I was armed with my new camera and for the first time could hope to catch a little bit of what days like this are like...

When I woke up this morning, the 10 inches of snow from yesterday has melted down to 7 inches!

Today has been a pretty good day to work. The level of concentration I need to work is helped by there not being any distractions. But sometimes, like today, there can be SO nothing that THAT is a distraction.

There is nothing out there when I look out my office window...

... at times the gate will appear, then disappear. Mostly is was gone all day.

Sometimes I can get a glimpse of the weather station about 60 feet away.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where they show where someone has died, or is off on some astral experience. They always show people in a white room where you can't see any borders and have no idea where you are. This is where I find the house. Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm Dave Bowman at the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Looking out the front dormer window, it looks like the house is out of existence...

... nothing else is out there.

This is no overexposed picture. This is really the way it looks, nothing is out there...

... if you look real closely in the second to the bottom, left most pane, you can see a tuft of grass out there.

The house is a little buried too...

While I've been working all day, Timber and Sugar have been sleeping and playing out on the front porch.

Sugar loves pouncing on Timber when he's laying down. I decide to get out of the house and go get the mail. I harness up the dogs, put on the gaiters (Gore-Tex cuffs that go around your calves to keep the snow from going down your boots) and head out into the mist.

Looking back at the house, in a few more steps it's gone.

Sugar is lead dog today. She's blazing a trail across the bridge and up the hollow.

Here you can see that the snow on some of the little Hemlock hasn't quite melted enough to let them spring back up.

This tree was/is just about ready to put out it's leaves/

A nice little Red Spruce in the forest.

A winter scene in the forest.

As we get nearer the mailbox, you can see the forest at the edge of this meadow.

Here we're almost back home. The house normally just coming into view as we climb this little hill. The warm gravel has melted out ruts that look like someone has driven on the road, but they haven't

Ahhh, the house finally appears out of the mist.. back home.