With heavy snows and sub-freezing temperatures just three days ago, today reached 65 degrees, made warmer by the bright sun and blue sky. I found Dad settled heavily in his recliner, looking exhausted, which he was.  He explained that he had worked “all day” in the yard, raking out thick mats of pine needles and milkweed stalks from the landscaped beds.  He had reached above the rock wall and stretched the rake as far as he could—he can no longer climb to the terrace.  “Can you help me?” he wondered, asking me to pick up the piles and compact them in the big garbage can.  I used the technique my son Brian taught me, scooping a snow shovel underneath the pile and pinching from the top with a rake, then picking up the pile and dumping it in the can.  Before long, the piles were gone, and the can was compacted and full.  I jumped up onto the terrace and quickly raked the area Dad could not reach, filling the can beyond the brim.   “Doesn’t that look nice and tidy?” he asked, pleased.  He was thrilled to have worked in the yard after the long winter, though he characteristically worked too hard and too long and barely made it staggering back to the house, to settle heavily in his recliner, too tired even to eat.  But Dad came outside and sat in a chair to watch me finish the work he once did, to crow over the tidy beds, and to sigh at his beautiful snow-capped mountain view.  “Isn’t the mountain just beautiful?  Lone Peak is now a designated wilderness area.  There are no maintained trails.”  He had climbed to Lone Peak 20 years earlier, exulting on the 11,253-foot peak, neglecting to take enough food or water, and making it back thanks to nice young hikers who noticed and shared.  “Did you hear they just found a wolverine in those mountains?  A wolverine!  Here!”  We had seen the story on the news, of game wardens in a helicopter filming a black wolverine racing through the snow in that wilderness.  They trapped it without injury, anesthetized it, measured and weighed it, radio tagged it, then released it, excited to track its forest wanderings.  Relatively little is known about wolverines, but the solitary aggressive carnivores often roam 15 miles a day in the most rugged mountain wilderness.  “I just love sitting here looking at the mountain,” Dad said as I went in the house to cook dinner.  He had me leave his tools outside, ready for tomorrow’s spring yard work.

(Pictured above, a view of Lone Peak, from YouTube, used under the Fair Use Doctrine.)

Dad and great-granddaughter Lila by the landscaped terrace and rock wall.