Welcome to the tag-end of winter on Antelope Hill. Since we last met, we have had snowstorm after snowstorm here. The deep snow in the nearby Cougar Mountains has driven more elk and mule deer than usual down into the lower foothills and onto Antelope Hill. Scott took this photo near our mailbox one evening on our way home from work. There were hundreds more elk here than would fit in the photograph. I have always liked how elk will take turns breaking trail in the snow, and will relieve the trail-breaker when he or she becomes tired. That's why they are traveling in a line here. I remember watching them break trail for one another when, as a girl, I would snowshoe up Lake Canyon every winter weekend to pull hay out of the potato cellar to feed our horses. I would pack a lunch, curl up in an "easy chair" I would build from hay bales, and watch the elk moving across the mountain to the east, in much deeper snow than we have here on the Hill,, breaking trail for one another. And now once again elk are close; the world comes full circle in strange, always beautiful ways.

Being up before dawn with the dogs every day before I go to work, I have a few moments to lean on my scoop tools and savor the sunrises here on Antelope Hill, which, even when I am shivering in five layers of polarfleece, light the snowy landscape like messages from the heart of the sun.

One morning at dawn some of the elk came to forage on the Hill and on our neighbor's place, where rich grasses remain, since (unlike on the surrounding area) our wild desert grasses have not been grazed to almost nothing by cattle. We have had blizzards, melting, more snow, drifting, and more melting. One day last month, a man froze to death in a snowstorm, only two miles from Antelope Hill! I was shocked, remembering so many of my childhood treks alone in the hills above our family's little brown house in the dark, in very much deeper snow, with temperatures in the 30- to 40-below-zero range, not a mild 18 degrees as it was here the day that fellow perished. My goodness.

Above, in midmorning a cottontail rabbit sits sentinel over his hole in the snow that leads down to his winter home in a pile of lumber left over from the construction. This fellow and his or her relatives come out to play at night and leave tracks all around the house. Just recently, we have seen them nose to nose, and then running crazily about as if demented. Breeding season is beginning.

One evening just at twilight, it began to snow. After trudging around with the new, less-liable-to-freeze black rubber water buckets, I suddenly realized that the snow was just perfect for making a snowman, for the first time since we had moved to Antelope Hill! If you have never made a snowman, perhaps you don't realize that the snow has to be just right, or it will not stick to itself and cannot be rolled into the balls it takes to make a good snowman. It can't be too cold, and it can't be too warm and slushy. This night, it was perfect. So, with Greggie watching with intense interest, I made this snowgal. Her hair is tansymustard and her arms are wild sunflower stalks. Her buttons are wild sunflower seed heads. Her features are gravel from under the snow. Scott looked down from the deck as she reached completion and tossed me a carrot for her nose!

Darkness fell gently that evening, and my snowgal raised her spindly arms to the snowflake-filled sky with a smile upon her cold face. I didn't dare even think "bad hair day"! It had been almost two years since I had made a snowman. I had forgotten what happy creatures they are, better than Prozac or Valium or money for lifting the spirits.

I gathered the adult Shelties and we all went inside with happy hearts when it was dark and time to feed the three puppies.

When I was measuring a space on the kitchen wall for a possible bulletin board, I discovered quite by accident that Callie's puppies would not cross a metal tape measure that was on the floor! This astonishing development has made it easy to keep the three Terrors of the Deep in the kitchen. No more do they constantly leap the low barrier into the carpeted living room. I am still scratching my head over this one, but it works!

Staying in the kitchen is good. There is lots to do here (the kitchen is 16 x 32 feet and has a long hall as well, plenty of room for puppies to run around).

I am one of the world's lucky people. Love is a strange quality. Love is necessary, yet elusive; held fast, yet difficult to grasp. These roses came from Scott to my desk at the office this year after the strange adventure of having been mistakenly delivered to a determined young soldier who found me and saw to it that I received them. Some of the roses were slow to open. Two weeks later, the others have blown their petals and withered, but these slow, scarlet roses have opened their hearts and are still fresh and lovely two weeks later. I put them in a smaller vase, and they bloom on, scenting the kitchen with a promise of spring to come.

At times when I am outside doing the dog work, it seems as if I am so chilled that I will never be warm again. But the world has a way of balancing things, and often at such times the sky burns and banishes the cold to a place where I can no longer feel it.

Still later, I try not to think of the cold as I stay out with the Shelties for their pre-pedtime run, carrying icy buckets and the every-present scoopers. The forecast was for snow on the night of the total eclipse of the full moon, and indeed, a few flakes were falling from time to time. Through a gossamer veil of cloud, the moon shone fuzzily -- and then the shadow came for it and swallowed it up. At the time of total shadow, suddenly all the Shelties began to howl, and moments later, they were joined by the sweet, thin voices of coyotes somewhere far to the west. There is nothing like the real world.

Two weeks after her birth and surrounded by the swirl of wind-blown drift, the snowgal still has her smile. Isn't it wonderful that photographs will help me remember her after the last of this winter's snow has melted away?

Three Point Peaks seem to gather light, especially in the winter. Soon the snow will be melting, but now Three Point looks like a portion of pristine Antarctica set down in the foothills of the West. It's time to get out the premium list for the ASSA National, pour a second cup of tea, and dream over it just a little. See you there!