Since mid December, we’ve been snowed under. When it stopped snowing it got cold, and our two feet plus froze in to a sheet of ice that’s still lingering on much of our land. And next week, more snow. We’ve taken advantage of this warm weather window to do some brush clearing and clean-up where we could. And then last Saturday, we realized how long it had been. Way past time for a Back Yard Day. We packed up Elvis the dog, a bag of mandarins, and our pure well water in our stainless Old Republic beer canteen, and headed up Highway 49. Our plan was to find Brandy Creek up in the North Fork Yuba drainage. Just out of town we stopped at an old bridge we love. Not too long ago we could drive over it, but those days are gone.

We spoke for awhile with a father and his grown son, who was autistic and could not speak. Watching the father’s loving way with his man-son filled me with hope and admiration. We headed up to Brandy City, off the Cal Ida road, but underestimated the amount of snow. We drove up Road 25 toward Cherokee Creek, but were stopped again. Undaunted, still thrilled with the day off, we turned around and ended up back at our favorite rapid on the North Fork–Maytag.

It seemed like months since it was just the two of us in the truck–well, three counting Elvis–with nothing on our agenda but the beauty of our back yard. We found it more crowded than usual, probably because so many of the side roads were still inaccessible. We ended up at Peterson’s, our favorite road house, where we crashed the end of a shower for a baby named Eddie. They still fed us and fed us well.

A quick stop at Mother Trucker’s to pick up some dessert and we were home. We’d really just been around a long block in the nabe, but we felt refreshed, luckier than lambs in clover to live on the west slope of the Sierra.