I am excited this morning to use the cross country skis. The trail should be perfect. Yesterday someone with impeccable style skied a perfect parallel trail through the moraine woods. Now it is just discernible under three inches of newly fallen snow.  I move onto the trail, Aki close behind but after a few glides my skis slow and then stop, glued to the trail by sticky snow.

This happens in Southeast Alaska where snow can turn to rain on a slight shift in the wind. They call it “icing.”  In an hour or maybe minutes a temperature change will erase the problem but that won’t help me now. Aki has her own icing problems as snow balls form in seconds on her fine hair.

Last year I would have pushed on, forcing my skis down the trail, pouring all energy into movement until sweat mixes with new fallen snow on my bare head. But wisdom arrived in the first hours of this new year so I remove the skis then realize we are on a snow covered beaver house. Falling snow fills the sky from here to the Ice Fields several miles away. It transforms in silence,