Something about snowy days, a warm fire and reloading shells…makes me nostalgic. A quiet time to reminisce about the past years outings. As the rhythmic muscle memory of steps… primer, power, crimping refills the boxes … my memory floats in and out like mini You Tube clips. Some highlights of the year… A family drive up through the Divide on an US Forest “road” and watching a huge brown bear turn over rocks above tree line on the ridge across f rom us. My 12-year-old son bugging to a bull elk and having him call back. Shooting Sporting Clays in the rain, snow and smitten bits of sunshine with two Olympic biathlete– no use keeping score shooting with them! The thrill of racing to stages, emptying mags, reloading as I run, during my very first USPSA shooting with Kay Miculek as my teacher at the Babes with Bullets Camp. Shot Show overwhelm and exhaustion. Teaching my prima donna nine-year old daughter how to read signs and tracks while scouting pre-elk season. And the very best… snowshoeing into the back country to spend Christmas at the Never Summer Yurts. Stringing popcorn and cranberries, rolling pine cones in peanut butter and birdseed we decorated the tree outside; so cold we could walk outside in our woolen sock feet and not get them wet; with the stars a blaze in the clarity that at 12,000 feet elevation
can make you believe you can touch them; and but to what wonder we see? A blinking red light moving slowly across the shadow of mountain tops. “Look! It’s Santa!” exclaims my daughter. And in deed it was. The miraculous joys of the season hummed in my heart and soul… May it hum in yours, where ever you are, however you celebrate… “Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night”!
