Snow-man's Land

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve-day, Jerry, Poldy and I had our first snow. We drove up to Shaver Lake in the Sierra National Forest, stopping along the way to buy tyre chains from some unbelievably nice people in an auto parts store. They guaranteed us snow as we travelled further up the highway. And sure enough, ten minutes later we started to see the white stuff on the edges of the road. It turned into a coating on the ground, and then a covering for ground, houses, cars and trees, whose skinny branches were striped with the stuff.

When we got to the sign that said Shaver Lake, it was actually snowing. We parked in a car park, not sure yet where the actual lake was, but excited to get out there and make the promised snowman (Poldy has been rather impressed with the many inflatable snowmen he has seen in peoples' front yards - particularly those with Christmas dioramas inside their bellies). We coated Poldy in many layers of puff and jumped out to play. Several snowballs, one snowman and more than one big flying stack later, the snow started to get heavier; much heavier. We overheard some Americans hurriedly making to leave, and thought - probably over-reactingly - that we'd better get out of there. So all in all, we spent about fifteen minutes in the snow, and we never saw Shaver Lake. But it was pretty magical.