So how is the new year treating you so far?
Mine has started with a bang! New writing deadlines, a child flying back to college, general clean-up of holiday stuff, feeling behind already, a few feelings of omg-is-it-really-only-week-ONE?, and … wow … snow!
We got snow on our Southern California mountains on Dec. 31. (So not technically 2015, but it was still exciting and felt like a nice way to start a new year!)
This is called Saddleback Mountain, and it’s normally dry and brown, with some flashes of green in the spring after it’s rained for a bit. (Unfortunately, the green only lasts a nanosecond.) But the morning of Dec. 31, I pulled out of my housing tract, glanced to my left to look for oncoming traffic, and sucked in my breath when I saw this:
I seriously breathed out “Wow!” right into my empty car. I did a quick U-turn and parked on the side of the street to take the above photo. (The things in the street are palm fronds that blew off the trees and into the street the night before, during our rainstorm.)
Hubby had called me in the morning and had told me there was “snow on Saddleback,” but I wasn’t prepared for THIS. Usually when there’s “snow” it only covers that very top peak, not ALL the mountains!
So I drove up to the lake (about a mile up that road) and took these:
I wasn’t the only one! There are a ton of people standing right behind me taking the same photos, and there were even cars parked on the side of the street with snow on them, who drove from about a mile away, from the base of the mountain. I guess they were even able to play with snow in their back yards! It was such a treat of beauty for us.
This last photo is one of my favorites because in all my 18 years in this town, I’ve NEVER seen snow on top of those mountains to the right! What-the-whaaaa?
(Plus, who doesn’t love a nice palm-trees-against-snow picture?)
So that got my new year off to a crazy, you-never-know-what-to-expect start! I hope the rest of the year is filled with such magnificent, beautiful surprises.
How is your year going so far?
