WIND!

The warm weather of the past 36 hours has been quickly turning back toward freezing, and although the rain had stopped several hours ago, things are still quite damp. This morning, too, much of the 1/2" of rain and melted snow had caused the vernal creek to go flowing again. By the time I had left home (indeed by the time I had woken up), all the snow had melted and the sheet of ice that had stared to form on Third Sister lake were gone. (Too, the ice on the frog pond was also gone.)

As I rode back this evening, the wind had picked up to gusts of 35 mph (55 kph), and I heard a couple of trees breaking and falling as I rode through the dark to the cabin. I'll have to check on the main road tomorrow morning to ensure that none of those downed trees are actually across the road. Although a part of me knew that the loud crack-crack-craaaaack sound was too far away to actually be of a danger to me, the fact that such a large tree was falling - and that I was surrounded by similarly large trees all subjected to the same winds - made me cycle just a little bit faster for the clearing in front of the cabin.