We celebrated the arrival of the Spring Equinox at the Latigo Dude Ranch by taking a wonderfully long ski on our 11 inches of new snow, and then I made strawberry shortcake for dessert.  It was a lovely celebration of spring, in our opinion.  The cold front that brought us the snow a few days ago keeps the temperatures near zero at night, but with the bright sunshine, we have the windows open during the day to keep the house from getting too hot.

Our annual men’s retreat is coming up this next weekend, and we’re expecting nearly 50 guys from our area to attend.  There will be a variety of speakers addressing the topic of how to love and honor God.  In the middle of that activity, we’ll also be hosting a ski race that will have three distances:  17Km, 34Km, and 51Km.  It’s called the Big Shooter Bonk, because folks who ski the longest division may experience the distress of bonking which is a physiological condition synonymous with precipitous fatigue and exhaustion.  Those of us who ski for enjoyment find it hard to understand why these racers would pay for such a large amount of pain!

We saw a bluebird at the bottom of Red Dirt Road this past week, and we’re beginning to see some new birds at our feeder.  The chickadees and Stellar Jays eat our seeds all winter, but now the red winged blackbirds are pushing them around a bit.  They just might have been regretting their decision to move north when the big snow hit last week.