Stellar Sunday on the Shoreline

this is one of the many reasons i love Salt Lake City ~ Sundays of the Shoreline.  i was in Tonopah, Nevada, the high west desert as i like to call it, for the better part of 4 months.  the time actually went by pretty quickly and although i was lucky enough to be able to come home to Salt Lake on most weekends (and spent some time in Bishop, California as well) it feels really good to be firmly planted at home.


after a snowstorm that lasted all of last night and the better part of the day today, the Wasatch Mountains were bedecked with two and a half feet of new snow.  most of my friends were thinking that i would have been out skiing and enjoying that snow, but i had other designs on the day.  first off:  World Cup Skiing.  it's the World Championships in my other heimat (click here for an explanation of the term heimat).  i spent a year in the same region learning German, teaching skiing and hiking the trails about fifteen years ago.  hard to believe it was that long ago. 

Garmisch Parten- kirchen (or GAP as it is known) is a quaint little Bavarian town near where my dad grew up in the German Alps and we still have really good friends there.  friends whom i would really consider my cousins, because my mom and dad's friends have really been like an aunt and uncle to me, and their three kids, about the same age, used to show me and my brother around when we were kids and visited in the summer time.

so i spent the morning today watching the World Champion- ships and remember- ing the feeling of skiing that hill.  i used to ski the same course at the close of the day with a couple of my friends when i was there, and we would ski as fast as we could.  i'm sure it took 5 or 6 minutes at our top speed to get to the bottom (the winners today skied it in less than two minutes).  as the racers went over the jumps and around the turns today, with the view of the beautiful valley and village below, i felt as if i was there with them.

after watching the Women's Downhill and wishing i was in Germany, i tanked up on french toast and coffee and hit the Shoreline with the dogs.  it was a glorious day.  it had stopped snowing, but everything was covered fresh and clean with a powdery white blanket and the sun was brilliant.  there were some storm clouds off to the west, which helped to filter the sunlight, and a few stray snowflakes would sparkle through the air every once in a while.  it all just seemed too perfect.

i'm looking forward to the next couple of months off from work and more magical days in these mountains in my backyard.