Pipe Dreams

It was an afternoon of wall-to-wall sunshine and blue skies, with temperatures that rebounded to well above freezing for the first time in days. We had originally had plans to visit relatives in the Chesapeake Bay area on this day to celebrate my husband's Aunt Sue's 90th birthday, but those plans fell through.

The forecast earlier in the week had included the strong possibility of an ice event Saturday evening into Sunday morning. So around mid-week, with great disappointment, we cancelled our plans, rather than risking such a long drive (about 4 hours each way) in potentially wintry weather.

Oddly enough, the wintry weather that was threatened never materialized. But this time of year, we make the best decisions we can with the information we have available at the time. We will try to go and visit Aunt Sue sometime this summer if we can work out all the details.

And so this left us with a day to ourselves. And we put it to good use. We stopped at Jim's in Bellefonte for an early lunch. Yes, we had "the entire usual," and it was delicious. And boy, would we need those calories before the day was over!

For the next thing that we did was something we have talked about doing for years. There is a fine, long sledding hill along the top of the ridge in the park near the new nature inn. We've had a lot of snow lately, and with sunshine expected, we thought we might give the hill a try. We like to get out sledding at least once a winter - oh yes, we talk about it and we dream about it - but there are some years when we just don't get to it.

So we drove to the park, parked the car in a nicely plowed lot, put on our gear, grabbed our fold-up chairs and our "sleds," which are just two pieces of cheap plastic with handles that you sit on and slide down the hill. And off we went, to give that sledding hill a go.

There was almost nobody there when we arrived, but soon the place was packed with old and young alike. There were inner tubes, actual sleds, snowboards, and every other kind of sliding device known to man. Someone had created some jumps in the middle of the hill, and just watching people try to navigate them was worth some pretty hearty laughs.

It was a long hill, which meant that sliding down was fun, but walking back up was not so great, actually. And as the temperatures warmed up, it was very easy to get overheated on the uphill climb. Soon we were giggling and shouting and sliding, with snow and ice flying. I looked at my husband and he was upside down, covered in snow. Or maybe I was? Who knows!?

We were there probably 90 minutes before we were totally exhausted. So we packed up our damp, snowy gear, and walked back to the car, where we left most of our stuff and went for a hike through the butterfly garden trail. (Just in case you're wondering: no, there were no butterflies present on this day.)

This photo is one of several that I took of a pile of blue pipes that I found near the upper parking lot at the end of the afternoon. I liked how their circles seemed to form an abstract design together; and I enjoyed looking through them to see tiny bits of sunshine, blue sky, and snow at the other end.

As I was taking this photo, more and more people were arriving in the parking lot and running up the hill to catch the last bits of daylight on the sledding hill. The thing that impressed me most was the variety of types, and sizes, and shapes, and ages of people tackling that hill.

The last pair I ran into were an older man who looked to be in his 70s, with a younger man who may have been in his 20s or 30s. Father and son, perhaps? They each had a sled, and they were moving at a fast pace, trying to beat the end of the light. I saw looks of excitement and determination on their faces. Winter can be an adventure at any age; no, it's not just a pipe dream. So get out and have some fun!

The song is Fleetwood Mac's Dreams.