Mt Washington

The ski hill that's about 40 minutes from us announced this week that it has the most snow of any ski hill IN THE WORLD! We woke up to a spectacularly clear day today, and thought it would be the perfect day to check out these claims and to take Dad up the mountain. Keep in mind that we had a spit of snow last week, that the temp has been in the +10s, and while it's been very wet (thus the snow at the higher levels) it's been pretty easy to live with.

They're claiming 5.5 meters of snow, and I can believe it. It was magical, snow piled on the trees, lots of people - likely their busiest day of the year, and it should have been. We watched the guys in the photo here sawing blocks of snow away from the windows of the Chalet - you can see the blocks at the bottom of the photo.

Wonderful to be able to visit winter like this.





Trumpeter Swans

These beauties arrived mid-November and there are hundreds of them (well, more like a couple of thousand). They grace the view out our window regularly, and will be here until the spring. I'm thrilled to find this video, taken in the last couple of weeks, from spots we drive by regularly.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Tonight Cori, Dad & I finished reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. We've been reading it out loud to each other after dinners over this last week and have been completely captured by its stories and the way they are told. Meg suggested that we would like it - she was right - and it's been, in part, a way of keeping her with us after she abandoned us and returned to the east. It's been part of a theme that started with Dad's Nov 11 WWII reflections (that we were part of in person this year), and included a remarkable production of Anne Frank's Diaries put on by students at the Comox high school. The book's voices of Juliet and her Guernsey and London friends are so strong that we're sorry that we're at the end of their regular communications with each other and with us. Their stories are not at all easy, but their horror is butt up against plain philosophical talk, an appreciation for the power of literature, and a remarkable humour and grace.
We're going to be looking for another good story so we can carry on reading to each other - any recommendations?