Reading: Margaret George, Mary Queen of Scots and the Isles

Moving: Snowshoed 4.5 miles

Listening: Dave Matthews, Studio C

Viewing: lots of magpies, snow-covered mountains, ravens, a snowy boulder from the wrong end--"60 Minutes," "The Simpsons," "Malcolm in the Middle," and "The X-Files."

6 February 2000: Snowshoeing

HAO called me in the morning. "Did I leave my sunglasses over there yesterday? I can't find them." I looked, but I didn't see, and I asked her, "Have you seen my green gloveliners?" and glory be she hadn't. I brought along my new sunglasses for her to wear ("I feel like Bono") but I had only my ski gloves.

By the time we got to Longmont or Hygiene or whatever middle of nowhere town (Longmont isn't the middle of nowhere, but I've been wanting to drop the name Hygiene for a while) lies between I-25 and Lyons, it was nearly 11 in the morning. As we passed a big ol' church with what looks like a silo in the front (with a cross-shaped window cut into it), we paused while a traffic cop let a bunch of churchgoers onto the road.

A couple of miles farther along, in front of a much smaller church, propped on either side of a large boulder, a sandwich placard stood. It bore a cross and a slogan. Its cross didn't look like a regular cross, but instead wider than it was tall and kind of slanted. Huh. The slogan explained why: "Like a Rock." Aha. This was the Chevrolet church. The larger church gets the Ford drivers.

My mother still won't divulge the particular denomination of her Rock Church. Which she writes as the ROCK Church, leading me to wonder if "rock" is here an acronym. A wedding invitation I recently received put the kibosh on that idea. Its actual name is "The Living Rock Church." Anyway, maybe the Living Rock Church is kind of like the Weather Rock? And if it's wet, it's a Baptist? The possibilities abound.

We stopped in the Estes Park Safeway for food. I bought myself a Glacier Blue Gatorade and assumed RDC had got the same, since his was also blue. Only after we'd shared the first bottle of my flavor did I open the other and discover he'd selected Cool Raspberry Blue. It was repellently sweet, which should have turned him off, but, he said, it was bluer than Glacier Blue. HAO asked, "But why would raspberry be blue?" Exactly! Because it's gross, that's why.

I don't know exactly how hungry HAO would have to be to eat Fig Newtons. The other person I know who shares her birthday also loves penguins and hates raisins and other dried fruit. It must be some Scorpio thing, except that RDC is also a Scorpio and as far as I know he doesn't feel particularly strongly about penguins and I do know he likes dried fruit of all sorts. So anyway by the time we got to Bierstadt Lake, HAO ate her Clif Bar and we ate our Fig Newtons and didn't give any to the Clark's Nuthatches or Ravens.

It was a good snowshoeing, because it was in the mountains and snowy, but it wasn't an amazing trek. No new snow had fallen for nine days, and the trail was so well packed we could easily have done it in boots. RDC and I, being by now such old hands, went off trail a couple of times (a treat in the winter, since you can't hurt snow). There's this one particular huge boulder that we plan to build a snowcave under if there's ever a blizzard. I went up and over and climbed a log and proved that falling off a log is as easy as falling off a log. Because it was so warm, I wore only fleece pants and carried my long underwear in my pack. (There's a sentence that would make no sense in French. Why do they have the same verb for "to wear" and "to carry"?) Because it was so warm, I wasn't wearing gloves. So I went head over MSRs in the snow. And that was some cold fucking snow. RDC said that was like calling someone "the strongest man on Earth," but I insist that some snow is colder than other snow.

Those are my sunglasses HAO's wearing. Are they, or are they not, Bono sunglasses? That wasn't on purpose, but now I can't ignore it.

We stopped at the ranger station on the way out, as usual, to have a warm place to pee and strip layers. The ranger we talked to a fortnight ago was there and remembered both of us (it's from her I know how long it had been since fresh snow). She snowshoes between Bear Lake and Cub Lake, which you'd think wouldn't be a long trip since mother bears tend to stick pretty close to their cubs. Maybe we could try that next time.

The station sells postcards and books and maps as well. Also it sells puppets of some of the park's animals. As I came up the stairs, I saw moose antlers poking over some books and sprinted. A moose puppet. Ooh, or an otter. Also there were ravens, coyotes, eagles, a red-tailed hawk, black bears, and ground squirrels. The ground squirrels were bigger than the black bears. There should have been a sign: "These animals are not to scale (to each other)." I have accepted my mission in life as the Sorter of Stuffies and set these little guys up as well. They weren't quite as higgledy-piggledy as the Christmas bears and they weren't lined up for skinning like the tigers, but they were disarranged. I didn't sort them by species this time. Lamb with the lion, I say, and let 'em learn each other's language.

I really wanted to buy the bald eagle. I would name it Sam, after the Muppet. I envisioned flying it around the apartment, as we do with Blake, except flying a bald eagle puppet would not amuse Blake as flying him himself does. It would exercise him, though, probably better than his flapping. Blake would be petrified of a raptor flying in his house. Or so I assume. So I left it.

Oh! And we saw a real bald eagle too! I haven't seen one where I live since 1994, in Connecticut, when RDC came tearing down the hill from our apartment to RRP's and hurried us outside to see it. And we saw one in the San Juans, and RDC saw about eight from quite close driving near Vancouver, neither of which count as seeing one where we live. And neither would seeing one in RMNP. Zipping along I-25, I spotted this one perched in a tree just north of Denver. Unmistakable: huge, brown, and white-headed and -tailed. Wonderful!

After dropping HAO off, RDC and I settled on the couch to watch our necessary Sunday night television and not share the blanket and grouse about how the other's feet were on the wrong side. During "The Simpsons" I called HAO because I know she hates to be called during Important Programs. I banged the phone on the counter twice and yelled "Tunnel!" (which had to do with the episode at hand).