December's Child

 

A six pack sampler from this year's Christmas CD including what might be the quintessential American Christmas song. Email me if you want the full 22 song version. Also, don't forget everyone's favorite deformed, backcountry skiing elf. Little Sandy Sleighfoot is at it again. Enjoy.

Loretta Lynn: Silver Bells

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys:
Empty Chair at the Christmas Table

Wylie Gustafson: Christmas For Cowboys

Jimmy Martin:
Christmas Is Everywhere Except in My Heart

Mark Olson & the Creekdippers: December's Child

Robert Earl Keen: Merry Christmas From the Family

The Sound of Sight 33

 

The Mountain Goats: This Year

A Friendly Reminder

The busyness of a home renovation project has kept my mind on the roof above my head and other things of day to day consequence. The only thought of the changing seasons has been as it relates to the urgent nature of the project, the fact that soon all outside work will come to a halt and when that happens, at the very least, I want to live in a dry house.

It was a nice surprise, then, as well as a sort of wake-up call, to find my now annual postcard from Lea in my humble mailbox. Lea has been mentioned many times in these pages. We first met and skied together in Chile in 2007 and have crossed turns together whenever and wherever possible since. It's not often and I wish it were more but many miles have always separated us and the business of life is an awfully complex ball of wax.

At any rate, I must have done something right this year because I receive two postcards delivered to my humble mailbox, one from Bhaktapur, Nepal and the other from Patagonia. Lea pulled off some sort of funded "glacial research" trip to Nepal, her first visit. Stolen picture #1:

 

A few weeks later the second postcard arrived from Patagonia, a place she now knows well. Lea has been tromping around Chile and Argentina's winter landscape since time immemorial; I think by the time we met she was already on her second or third season down there and she has returned every year for a month or so since then. The best part is that she has a seemingly permanent traveling partner by the name of Lorenzo who is an equally excellent person and, as far as I can tell, makes her happy, as well as probably helps her parents breathe easier, too. Stolen picture #2:

 

The next best thing about the postcards is that they usually arrive at the time autumn turns to winter and the idea of Lea and Lorenzo skiing (and wading countless rivers) in the South just prior to all of us skiing again in the North makes me both happy and anxious. So now I'm happy and anxious to ski and this is a much better space to inhabit than the anxious and nervous (with the possibility of water falling on my head) space that preceded her postcards. Thanks, Lea. Thanks, Lorenzo. Thanks for being two of meiner Lieblings-Skifahrer, Wanderer, und Freunde.

Read about Lea and Lorenzo's adventures in Patagonia in her blog: Over the Hills and Far Away.

And now it's time to refocus 'cause there is new and deep snow in those hills yonder.