Ahoj, Ulster County, Ďakujem za čítanie.
To begin with, just before 6 a.m. this December 11, the temperature is 29°. The air is like menthol. It doesn’t feel that cold, but still it’s not a morning to get locked outside in just a bathrobe.
Because the snow clouds have gathered low in the darkness, the world below waits quietly. Not a branch moves. The chimes hang perfectly straight and still.
The snow begins here sometime around 9 a.m., earlier in other places.
The mercury will be sluggish today, only rising a few degrees for a high just above freezing of 34°,
Not high enough for rain to wash away the snowfall. Humidity is 84 percent, but it’s expected to be absorbed into snowflakes.
After the pre-dawn blue glow, a muffled, muted and finally diffused sunrise begins at 7:14. If there is any wind at all, it will come out of the north. The day is just nine hours and twelve minutes long.
For the mountain forecast, now we go to Bjorn Jorgensen out at Belleayre Mountain.
Johannes: Bjorn, how does the morning find you? Can you make the summit out this morning?
Bjorn: Johannes, it has been a miraculous morning. It is minus three degrees [Celsius] at the summit. The snow clouds have come, and Karl will be relieved.
I was too excited, so I closed my telescope and resolved to walk the slope up to the summit using my crutches. There were still brief patches of sky while the clouds were crushing in from all sides, but where the moon showed through, sinking through Gemini, past Castor and Pollux, the soft light colored the snow. Well, I stopped to get my breath inside a copse of pine trees, for the air there is healthiest if there is no spruce available.
Johannes: So your ankle is healing?
Bjorn: Yes. I keep snow on it often, Karl’s belly is quite carved out. But this is not what I wanted to tell you. Leaning against a pine trunk I saw movement across the slope, and so I took out my telescope. And the clouds must have opened up, for I saw the bright copper hair of a woman lying in the snow on her stomach, her hands folded under her chin. She was alone, but she was alert. I tried to quiet my breathing and failed, so I just held it. There was a crow’s feather tied to her hair, and she had a fine bow carved of ash and a quiver of arrows. As I watched, she pulled the short bow close and notched an arrow, still lying on the ground. I was holding my breath. Something disturbed her, and I saw her stand up quickly and looking to the snow falling from the sky she disappeared behind a stand of pines.
And I heard a scream of pain! A long high-pitched keen to make your heart beat faster! Even with my bad ankle, I leaped forward, forgetting myself, almost dropping my telescope.
Well, I was on all fours then to save my ankle while I gathered up the crutches when I saw her re-emerge. I looked through the telescope, and I could see she carried a dead rabbit by the ears.
That was the scream I had heard, Jojo. Sometimes they scream. Then you have to rush forward and grab them by their feet and knock them senseless to save them from their pain.
Johannes: A very dramatic morning, Bjorn.
Bjorn: And then I lost sight of her. The sparest snowfall had begun. Like the ash from a forest fire. The snow even felt hot on my cheeks, though I knew it should be cold. Well, I knew Karl would be pleased. You know Karl speaks from time to time?
Johannes: Your snowman speaks? What does he say?
Bjorn: Wait until tomorrow, Johannes. Everything in its time.
High tide will be at 3:15 p.m. The sun sets at 4:26 p.m., while the moon, truly a gibbous now at 86 percent, will rise at 7:21 p.m., though no one will be able to see it.
Join the family! 
