Giving Thanks for a Winter Wonderland

I suppose the title could be a slight bit misleading as it's still technically autumn. And there were only a few inches of snow on the ground (if that). But it was Thanksgiving morning and the weather had finally chilled quite a bit. My wife and I have vastly different opinions of when the weather gets chilly, or cold, or frigid. But it was freakin' cold yesterday. Delightfully cold. Thankfully the wind was at a minimum so the bone-chilling aspect hasn't yet kicked in yet. Boy was it gorgeous out there.

I met up with a few friends at the entrance to Eldorado State Park in Colorado about 8:30am. My friend Kirk had come in from the west @ over 7,000' elevation and was amazed at how low the cloud cover was. Coming in from the west and a higher elevation, he had awoken to sun and driven into our local Front Range haze. Hopefully a sign of good weather to run into - quite literally. Scott showed up with his dog Gracie - her paw print (or size) would come in handy a little later in the run to confirm the other local(s) out on the trails with us. It was probably in the single digits and if not, definitely in the low teens. I was forced to put my leggings on - drat. This was about the cutoff for me wearing something other than shorts out on the trails. We set off a short time later up towards the Walker Ranch loop. We weren't planning on doing much more than the 7-mile RT, but anything goes on the trails - good or bad.

It really was a particularly delightful ascent as the snow started piling up a bit more, but there were cracks of blue sky. Excellent. And then Scott looked down ahead of him and noticed the "other" set of tracks on the trail...... we compared Gracie's to the already-established tracks. They were of a cat and significantly larger - on the order of twice the size. So, our local friends, the mountain lions were active and had the privilege of first tracks this particular morning. Thankfully, there were 3 of us along with Gracie; and our other friends Cindi and Dave were a bit further back on the trail, so hopefully enough of our human ignorance spewing about would push them away. We trudged on as our feline friends' tracks would follow the established trail for a bit, then head off in another direction, only to reappear several minutes later. All the while the azure sky coming into view and enveloping our very being. We truly are small creatures out here, albeit thankful ones.

The morning's mountain jaunt thankfully ended without incident and only views and crisp, cold, mountain oxygen molecules were absorbed. But, the constant reminders of our wild neighbors and potentially dangerous trail conditions must stop and give one pause, at least in the mind. I prefer to keep running.