Sparks

Sasha had an awful cough so we kept her in the back of the truck, bundled in a coat and hat and sleeping bag and wrapped all 'round with packing blankets; she had peppermint tea, too, and some chocolate chip cookies and her favorite snow leopard. My husband threw snowballs at her to make her laugh, and then Blake threw snowballs at him so I tackled Blake and put snow down his shirt, and then the three of us and my brother-in-law sprinted out into the meadow.

First snowfall in the mountains!

All week my husband had been watching the weather, telling us It's coming! It's coming! And so it did. We'd intended to check out Mt. Bachelor, where locals sometimes spontaneously gather for a party at the first snowfall, but the resort had closed their road so we drove instead to the meadow at Sparks Lake.

The sky hung low and white, hiding Mt. Bachelor and South Sister. Snow fell lightly. The meadow grasses had all turned brown, their seedheads bowing in the wind. In early summer this meadow is shot through with rivulets that have melted off the surrounding mountains, but this time of year the water is gone; and the gullies had instead collected snow. It was beautiful. It felt beautiful. I felt large and full of breath.