Meanwhile...
The days, crisp and sunny, wet and snowy, sometimes a fine mix of both...
Days, too cold, too wet, too slippery to go far, then, some days just right. Head off with Chris, exploring above the fluorite seam, find an old silver mine (another one, this mountain, it's a swiss cheese filled with them), shallow adit that ends in perhaps 30 feet. Interesting growths - crystals forming on the ceiling.
Going through the tipple, some shiny crystals, at first Fluorite (I think), but no, then Calcite (but too hard), take them to Brad at the Chamber of Mines. "Quartz" he tells me, only, to my eye, they're a bit different than quartz, and first of all I mean the weight, more an "Ore" weight than a quartz weight, heft it in your hand and you'd know, but - until I have better information I have to defer to his expertise, and I should, really, but - heft it in my hand again - the weight, surely it must be something else - a transparent silver ore? Hmmmm.
When the snow is melted walk the beach, look for arrowheads, none, but this:
Remains of a blue crayfish, invasive most probably, but a vivid, electric blue...
To the valley, other things to be dug for, exploring to be done. But no, get out of the car, walk to the cliff, find yourself waist-deep in snow, unable to move. Lake level is dry, but only a few meters off the road and things can get hairy in a hurry. Other locations, similar results, too much snow still to do any finding. Back to the sapphires, crawl into the crevice that leads behind the pegmatite, a narrow squeeze into a tight cavern filled with icicles, trying to squeeze my way out crushes my phone, a hundred bits to be glued and taped back together...
The blue-jays, now 16 in total, word spreads, wait in the tree every morning, a few, more vocal, hop along the rail, try to wake you up, it's time for breakfast!
The evening, moon-dog, my camera on the phone isn't up to getting the shot, maybe there's some pro-settings I could adjust, but I'm not finding them, play with the settings, results vary, are the same, it's just a blobby of light in the sky with what appears to be a lens-flare.
Bringing us to yesterday. Morning, snowing - again, 4 inches already and there's a raging blizzard of sorts, white caps on the lake, trees bending and ducking, the blue-jays have hidden themselves away for the day, hunkered down. And enjoying my first cigarette, looking out over the lake - where the falling snow meets the white-capped waves there's a boat...
Small fishing boat, cabin, you can just make it out, who would be on the lake at this hour? In this weather? And so I watch it, it's going up lake with the waves, now turning, again, and again, I try to take a picture but it's disappearing into the horizon, too far to make out precisely. It spins, and again, bobs, it's not manned, clearly, there's something haunting to watch a boat come unmoored dancing on the edge of the foreshortened horizon, spinning, to be carried up to a further shore or to capsize and sink, these speculations already irrelevant as it's disappeared...