Day 87: I took an extended lunch in order to walk beyond the Park's back gate and out to Skate Creek Road today, slipping and sliding on ice in some places and slogging in mud in others, glad of an occasion when I could visit the Beaver Pond in wintry conditions. I've spent many a happy summer hour here, tormenting a modest population of native cutthroat trout in between untangling my backcast from the branches of the alders, but never before when snow blanketed its setting. I knew it had to be beautiful; it is a gem in June, its colors changing like a tanzanite, reflecting the greens of grass and tree at one angle and an azure sky from another. In the hues of winter's palette, it could be no less, but winter posed a problem for access. Skate Creek Road, which goes only from Ashford to Packwood, cannot justify a budget for plowing (or, for that matter, general maintenance), and is closed when the snow flies. The Park road is a spur angling off it, and on the wrong side of a locked gate. Access, therefore, is by foot, and from the Administration Building at Longmire, it is a little over two and a half miles to the pond. In deeper snow, that distance would be too much to tackle on a lunch break. Today, however, was slow. I finished my assignments early and was granted leave to be away from my desk longer than usual. Thus I wound up here, sharing a new season with an old friend. Just a wink of blue sky appears as a reflection of past summers, an acknowledgement of our history together.
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