Winter Falls

 

Poor, poor Palmetto tree. For the second year in a row we received a surprise snow storm here in the Columbia area. The snow, a couple of inches at most, mercilessly weighed down the fronds of our not so tropical looking tree. Amazingly it will survive. I, on the other hand, may not.

The kids of course loved it. They were quick to run out the door in the morning. We no longer have all the winter gear we once did when living in the Midwest so the kids went out with what they had. Ainsley was all bundled up whereas Ty didn't even wear a coat - or socks. He was eager to try out the new Keen sandals he got for Christmas. They were actually intended for stomping through streams and creeks in spring, summer, and fall, not a winter snow storm. He lasted all of about ten minutes before realizing his error in judgment. That was sooner than I would have guessed. 

They tried to make a snowman in the front. However, all the dead grass rolled into the snow making for the hairiest balls of snow you have ever seen. He looked shady - like the type of snowman you might expect to find in a dark alley.                                                                                                                                           Tess liked the snow too. She ran around the backyard waiting for someone to throw her a ball. When we were still living in St. Louis our old German Shepard, Cosmo, used to lay out in the snow for hours at a time. Because of an eternally clogged drain we had a large pool of water that would collect in the middle of our driveway. It sat there for weeks at a time freezing, melting, and then refreezing. When the air temperature would venture above 32 degrees Cosmo would lay right in the middle of the frigid water. It's amazing how well adapted to cold weather animals can be. I am not.   

I make it out to be worse than it is, though. I don't really so much hate winter. It's just not my favorite season. I was reminded of why during our nearly week-long visit in St. Louis. In our six days there we never once saw the sun. When we lived there I remember this happening for much of December, January, and February. This was why my favorite day of the year was March 1st -not Christmas, Thanksgiving, or even the first day of summer.  Because in my mind flipping the calendar to March meant the return of the sun and warmer temperatures. Of course this wasn't always true. There were occassional March snowstorms and stretches below freezing. This would drive me mad. I'd bundle up and walk the kids to the zoo all the same but it with a defeated spirit.

Surprisingly Tricia and I got married in winter. December 31st to be exact. Tricia's grandmother warned "No one will come!" 

"That's okay," I assured her. We would be there.

It was on a Tuesday night at 7:00pm and people did show up. It was an unseasonably warm 40 degrees outside and there was no snow. Now each year when we go out to celebrate our anniversary, yesterday was our fourteenth, not only do we have to avoid jacked up New Year's Eve pricing but the weather as well.

This year we decided to make the best of a winter anniversary getaway and visited Asheville, North Carolina. On the drive up we stopped in Brevard to hike out to a couple of waterfalls. Despite the fact that is was in the 50's and dry at home the mountains were chilly and snowy. Not too chilly, though. Always ultra-concerned with packing light, I chose not to bring my hiking boots along. I figured we'd only be out for a couple of miles at most and I could make due with my tennis shoes. It was a mistake. The paths were very snowy and icy and I had to ginger-foot my way through a number of sections. Tricia joked that I was walking like an old man - all hunched over and shuffling my feet a few inches at a time. She, on the other hand, was wearing her earwarmers and could not hear most of what I said to her. "WHAT?" she'd yell when I had said something. We were quite the site I am sure.

The first falls we saw was Hooker Falls. Despite it's name there was no gathering of prostitutes. In fact, we were the only ones there.                                             Hooker Falls constitutes the fourth falls in a short stretch of the Little River. It was really beautiful. While not too tall, maybe twenty feet at most, it more than made up for it's short stature with it's respectable width and massive water flow. The snow and ice wrapped around the falling water making for quite a show. I pulled out my camera, snapped one shot, and the battery died. Luckily I had a second camera. Pulling it from my backpack, I soon found that its battery was dead as well. It's worth pointing out that I quit the Boy Scouts after only a few months. I'll blame that for having come unprepared.

From Hooker Falls we hiked on to see Triple Falls, High Falls, and then Bridal Veil Falls. We had seen the first two in summer conditions so it was fun to have the opportunity to see them in winter. Triple Falls are a series of stair-stacked falls. High Falls is a large-drop falls that, while beautiful to see, doesn't photograph too easily. Bridal Veil Falls, a new one to us, was largely a rock slide.  All-in-all we wound up hiking about six miles for the day.

The next day my mom and the kids came up to join us. We walked around the eclectic shops of Asheville and had a New Year's Dinner at a really cool Indian restaurant. The next morning we woke up early in hopes of finding a few more falls before heading back home. The weather was mild but rainy.  As we pulled off the interstate we made our way along a windy road. I was amazed to see that there was little to no snow given all the snow Tricia and I had seen just two days earlier. We found a very unofficial looking parking pull-off and set off walking across a small grassy field. Within a hundred yards or so we saw our trail branch off to the left into some high grasses and thorny plants.

Our destination was Bradley Falls. Bradley Falls has a very high drop and is seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We hiked and hiked and hiked without seeing a single soul. About half a mile in we came to a creek crossing. While the water was not incredibly high, it was incredibly cold. Fortunately we packed in our sandals which made wading across much easier. A few seconds into my crossing I was surprised to find that the water wasn't nearly as cold as I had anticipated. However, about ten seconds later my perspective had significantly changed. My immersed feet and ankles were so cold I thought I might die (perhaps a slight exaggeration). It was incredibly painful.    

Our trail quickly rose about a hundred feet above the creek and within twenty minutes or so we could hear the roar of the falls below us. We found a side trail that scrambled down the mountain side to a rock overlooking the falls. The rock was scary in that it wasn't all that large and there was no gentle slope down to the falls and creek. Rather, it was a sheer drop off of around sixty or seventy feet. I told the kids they were not allowed to stand and that noone could go near the edge. It was very nerve wracking. Still, Bradley Falls was very cool. It was pretty far away and partially obstructed by a tree so the photography wasn't all that great but being there was. 

The hike back was quick. Just as my mom made her second crossing of the creek in sandals, as the rest of us carefully scrambled across rocks to avoid the water, it began to rain. We hurried back to the van and drove home. As we got closer and closer to home the temperatures soared. It was about 70 degrees at home. Now that's a nice winter temperature!

Week In Review - Too Much to Write About!

I came back from our Christmas trip to St. Louis with more blog ideas than I possibly had time to write about. My buddy Tim gave me a small notebook on our last day of school before Winter Break that read "Fill these pages with important words and thoughts." He might be disappointed because, instead, I filled it with superficial observations and smart ass comments from our Christmas trip.

The first came just a few hours into our drive as we passed into Georgia. One of the very first billboards I saw read:

Make your ONE call to...
1-800-CALL -KEN
Ken Nugent Legal Services

Really? I know that colonial Georgia was basically a roaming prison, serving as a spot for England to send its less desirables, but I would hope that after these hundreds of years things would have changed. I've been to both Alabama and Louisiana and I know for a fact that a good deal of those "less desirables'" descendants are now living throughout the south. So why would Georgia allow Ken Nugent to welcome travelers with such a sign? Are there THAT many people getting arrested? Is there really that much money to be had from these people?

The second blog idea came on our second day with Tricia's parents. I made my first visit to church in five years. I really do not like church. As a child I went as often as three times a week - Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening. There was also church league bowling, softball, and volleyball. And youth group, play practices, and countless lunches and dinners. It wasn't the amount of time spent at church that turned me off, though. I just grew to question the likelihood of all those stories and the reasonableness of all those beliefs.

Tricia's parents church is quite different from the smallish Baptist church I grew up attending. It seats more than a thousand people. has two big screen TVs mounted behind the pulpit, and hosts religious and social events most, if not every, night of the week. The service lasted a little over an hour but the sermon itself was ten to fifteen minutes tops. The sermon was all about "breaking down the walls that we build around ourselves." The walls were a metaphor for our need for a sense of comfort, safety, etc. There were very few mentions of God or Jesus so it went well enough. The other fifty minutes were spent singing songs and listening to announcements. My mom asked how it went. "It went okay. Maybe I'll go back in another five or six years," I said. But probably not.

The third blog idea came when Tricia and I went out for a date night. We went to one of our favorite restaurants in St. Louis - an Indian place in the Central West End called Rasoi. Afterward we headed over to the Chase to see True Grit. As always, parking in the Central West End was nearly impossible. We finally found a spot but had only fifty cents for the meter. As Tricia will attest, I always seem to think that we don't need to feed the meter. "You don't have to pay after 5:00" I might argue. Or, "It's free on Sundays." Or worse, "No one even checks these meters!" I'm generally very much a rule follower. Like Ainsley I think people should follow the rules no matter what. I'll sit through a two minute red light at 3am with no cars anywhere in sight because that's what I'm supposed to do. I often stand on the curb and wait for what seems like forever for the walk signal even though there's no traffic. But for some reason when it comes to paying the meter I find every reason not to adhere to my legal obligations.

As we pulled into our parking spot and Tricia found that we only had two quarters she asked what I thought we should do. The movie didn't start for another hour (we were planning to walk over to the library to browse before heading down the block to the theater) and the movie was an hour and half at the very least.

"It's after six," I said. "You don't have to pay the meter after six."

"You always say that," she pointed out. "You NEVER think we have to pay the meter!"

"But I'm always right!"

Tricia sighed and looked up the street.

"Look," she said. "There's the meter reader!"

She was right. Two cars in front of us was a meter reader writing a ticket. After placing it under a windshield wiper he made his way up to the next car.

"We definitely have to get some change or find a parking garage now," she argued.

"No we don't," I said. "Look, he just checked all the cars on this block. It's 6:07 now. What are the chances he gets back to our block tonight? Euclid is a l-o-n-g street with a lot of meters. If anything we're more safe than ever."

It was dark but I can only imagine Tricia rolled her eyes. I really am hard to live with at times.

"Okay," she said. "But if we get a ticket you have to pay for it out of your own money."


"Ha, as if such a thing exists," I laughed.


We climbed out of the car and, ignoring the meter, pulled our jackets up around our ears and huddled together to head up the street. We instantly saw that the meter reader's car was parked just four spaces in front of our van. More debate ensued but we forged ahead. Once we got into the library I went to the information desk to ask how late you had to pay the meters. The librarian told me that they stop checking them at 7:00. Whether this meant you still have to pay them I wasn't sure but I headed back over to Tricia to gloat none-the-less.


"Well, go out and put our fifty cents," she told me. " At least we'll be paid until a quarter 'til or so."


I knew when to play nice and headed toward the front door. On the way I debated whether I should actually head out into the cold for what was certain to be a wasted effort (and wasted money) or if I should just hang out in the vestibule area for a few minutes and then head back in. Half an hour later, as we were heading out for the theater, Tricia, knowing me all too well, asked whether I had actually paid the meter or just pretended to. True to form I refused to say.


My fourth blog idea came a few nights later when attending "Christmas Eve" with Tricia's extended family. Due to busy schedules this party is never really on Christmas Eve but it's close enough. We haven't been able to attend this party the past few years so this was the first time we had seen these families in quite a while. Even when we lived in St. Louis we saw most of them only once a year, at this very party. They were like sometimes relatives.


I'm not much good at small talk and at no other time is this more evident than at this party. Tricia tried to coach me on the way.


"Talk to my Uncle Dennis about the food dehydrator you got from your kids at school," she suggested. "He used to have one too and talked about it all the time."


She's worse at small talk than I am and I wasn't too sure why she felt a need to offer help given that the one person at that party that I was usually pretty good at talking to was her Uncle Dennis. We generally talked about vacation plans and running. It was perhaps the only two things we really had in common but we could talk endlessly about both topics.


As we walked into the party the room fell silent and all those strange faces turned to stare at us making our entrance. Only five seconds in and it was already awkward. This would prove to the be the high water mark for the night as things only went downhill from there. I started by seeking out Dennis. I figured I should start strong and move on to the others from there. Unfortunately our conversation didn't go as planned. Someone else I didn't know too well was part of the conversation too and I didn't feel comfortable talking about running for fear of leaving him out. I wanted to talk about vacations but they were just finishing up a conversation on this topic as I made my way over. I was baffled. What to do?


"So," I said. "I got a dehydrator from my kids at school for Christmas!"


"A what?" he said.


"A dehydrator," I repeated.


"What's that?" the other guy asked.


"You mean a dehumidifier?" Dennis asked.


I stammered.


"It dries your food out," I explained. "You know, it takes all the water out."


"Why would you want to do that?" the other guy asked. It wasn't the type of question that made you feel as though he really wanted to learn more about the subject but, rather, that he wondered what in the hell was wrong with you. As if you making this all up.


"It's to help preserve the food for hiking and backpacking," I explained. "You dehydrate it, pack it up, and then rehydrate it on the trail."


"Oh," they both said, simultaneously. They both looked around uncomfortably and walked away.


I stood there for a moment playing with the food on my snack plate. Tricia and her parents were talking with someone else across the room. I was tempted to join them and take comfort in numbers. Around this time Tricia's cousin Michael walked by to freshen up the snack table. He and I have had just a handful of conversations over the past fourteen or fifteen years. We have little in common and he's not all that talkative anyway. Still, I felt I needed to try. I had to prove to myself that I was capable of this simple social skill.

"Hey Mike," I said.  

Doh, I thought. He goes by Michael you idiot!
 
I saw that there was a book on his television titled The Elf on the Shelf. I knew of this book from school and had a funny antecdote concerning a conversation I had with my kids about it. I shared it with him and he said nothing. He didn't even offer up a chuckle. It was a good antecdote too. But still he didn't smirk.


"Yeah, well...I oughta be finding Tricia I guess," I said.


"Alright," he answered and turned away to return to the kitchen.


I was 0 for 2. My ability to make small talk didn't much improve from there. I later found myself in conversation with another teacher but we had an entire discussion where I don't think either of us really understood what the other was trying to say. Later I talked with a lady who took great interest in everything I had to say. She's known for this. In fact, she takes so much interest in what you have to say that you almost feel uncomfortable. She leans in real close, has a perpetual smile, and never breaks eye contact. Ever.

She really liked that the kids had spent time backpacking last summer.


"Now they will know how to fend for themselves and find food if they're ever lost in the woods," she commented.


She was serious. I didn't break it to her that backpacking was more about high tech cook pots and fuel canisters than berry gathering or squirrel hunting. She wanted to know about the bears, too. I may have disappointed her when letting on that we hadn't seen any bears but we had seen a  lot of snails.

"Tons of them!" I assured her.


The only highlight of my ability to make small talk was when I later told of our encounter with the parking meter for Tricia's sister and brother-in-law. They laughed and laughed. I suddenly felt like a bad poker player. The one who stays in to the bitter end of every hand and only to lose nine times out of ten. Why, then, does he stay in so often? Because he remembers that ONE TIME when he pulled the perfect card and won. Tricia's sister and brother-in-law are my perfect cards. They keep me wanting to try again.


So there it is. More stories than I could ever write about.