Dry Creek: A Place for Family to Gather and Be

A winter welcome at Dry Creek

 

Light on stark aspen trunks outside the window decked in Christmas attire: tree glittering with white lights, gold ornaments and red bows; candles flickering on the window sill--the dry, faded, sun-bleached browns of the winter field beyond, shaggy, snow-bent, frosted.  The wall of tangled oak and maple along the canyon edge and the juniper ridge beyond.  The Holidays have arrived at Dry Creek this strange, unpredictable November 2012.

View out the living room window the day after Thanksgiving

The weather has varied as much as our work schedules at a home for boys 45 minutes from here.  Like us, the snow, the cold, the heat, the rain--they come and go seemingly randomly.

Earlier this month we had 13 inches of snow, even out in the desert.  That was followed by extremely cold temperatures, morning lows of 12 at Dry Creek and zero out in the valley.  A few days of general bitterness was followed by an inversion, where temperatures were warmer at higher elevations and coldest along the valley bottoms, even in the middle of the day, which meant the snow melted quicker along the juniper and oak fan of the the Pahvant Range, where Dry Creek is located, then out along the dry alkali beds of the desert floor.


First snow at Dry Creek for winter 2012--13 inches! (mid-November)

 

Soon after came the rains, even along the mountain tops, which here reach 10,000 feet. This melted much of the winter the winter snow pack we gained the week before.  Since then it's been warm and dry, which I'm sure we will regret come spring, but it did make for a wonderful thanksgiving.
 
We had a full house on thanksgiving--nineteen in all, not counting Mom and Lloyd, who live just up the gravel lane.  And the wonderful thing is that it worked just fine.  One night Marci and I slept over in the old two-bedroom trailer that was our summer home for years.  Mitch, Shane and Tyler slept in the tent trailer.  We had a fire in house, at the trailer, and the children even had one outside where they roasted marshmallows thanksgiving night, preferring them, I guess, to pie.

There was also target practice, wild turkey gazing, deer gazing, as well as boulder tossing and mud splattering on a trip out to Clear Lake.


Deer gazing from the living room window

 

Clear Lake outing the day after Thanksgiving: a) Clear Lake, b) Ethan, c) LLoyd d) Darth and e) Tyler

Because I sprained my ankle on the way to the trailer to get pie plates Thanksgiving Day, I wasn't able to participate in much of the shooting, gazing, boulder tossing or mud splattering, but none the less, it was wonderful to see Dry Creek used for it's primary purpose--a place for family to gather and be.