You're Gonna Miss This

There's a country song out right now called You're Gonna Miss This. It's a sappy diddy about living in the now. I like it, some. My taste in music sucks, so be careful.

The weather has been absolutely awful lately. Soon enough it will be sunny, and I can, not, wait. Even so, my recent weekends up in the nearby hills, plodding around in the snow, have been special. I AM gonna miss this. The hills are empty in the early hours, and this is the longest the snow has hung around locally that I can remember. The Skagit Valley Herald, one of my trusted sources for the information, says it's because of La Nina, which has something to do with ocean currents changing directions down by Peru. OK.

This morning, I made my way up to Lizard Lake, on Blanchard Mountain. The fog on the way up was ghostly, running fast through the trees. The streams were running too, from the meltoff, and my feet got soaked because the trail was flooded. I took a different route than usual---not running, really--as I decided I wanted to explore and take pictures. By the end I was tuckered out just the same, because of the knee deep snow near the lake. The lake itself was frozen over.

Yesterday was my true weekend run. I struggled up to Fragrance Lake, and from there up the Chinscraper to Chuckanut Mountain. Deep snow again at the top, but the trail was passable all the way up. Coming down, I met Corey from Spokane, who was trying his best to figure out the middle 18 of the Chuckanut 50k. I was going to head down, but I decided to show him the Ridge and actually run for a while. Corey works at Runner's Soul, a well known Spokane running store, and so he's a lot faster than me, but he toned it down, which was nice. The ridge trail is snow free.

Afterwards, I caucused for Hillary--that sure went well.