Trailing Along

Some of my best ideas have come during long training rides, tranquil cross-country skiing, grueling 60-flight stair climbs and while hiking Colorado's fourteeners.

One of my most fun ideas involves fourteeners but came to me on the flanks of a much shorter peak, an otherwise unlikely destination with an awesome name (which is precisely why we hiked it). I'd been naming my crocheted bears and lizards after trailheads we traveled to while making the yarn critters. Along the golden aspen flanks of a molehill called Tater Heap, the inspiration to tote my bears up peaks hit me like a bolt of lightning. Stuffed animals have accompanied me on every hike since.

Snowcatcher came to me as we attempted to summit a pair of rocky peaks called Payne and No Payne, no kidding, on the third anniversary of my unplanned and life-changing back surgery. Surgery occurred in November, and the upper elevations of the Lost Creek Wilderness typically are encrusted with razor-sharp, crunchy snow that time of year. I didn't reach the mountaintops the year Snowcatcher was born. But my first Snowcatcher website was up and running by the following year when I tagged both Payne and No Payne on the fourth anniversary of my surgery. Two celebrations in one!

The design mechanism in my head is always running, even when my fingers can't be creating. When I'm not driving, my fingers are flying.

I write poetry, crochet, knit, quilt, embroider and even occasionally retouch photos while in transit. Much of my handiwork has been accomplished aboard public transportation, but quite a bit is done en route to trailheads and on the way home from same, too, because my Better Half doesn't mind doing all the driving. I have been known to knit and crochet aboard a bike on a trainer. I have created bears in tents and while being chased by smoke around campfires. I even have nearly an entire set of lighted crochet hooks so I can keep going after nightfall.

My darling, charming and attractive husband dreams of riding the Continental Divide from Canada to Mexico. (He begged me to take the word "sexy" out of that first sentence, so I replaced it.) He once asked if I would accompany him on a tandem bike (and informed me the record time so far, as if I'd ever be able to keep up if that was the goal). I shudder at the thought of portaging a heavy bicycle built for two loaded with supplies, camera and lenses as well as the latest pair of socks in progress over unrideable sections of trail, but I'll bet I could crochet while he steers during the actual journey. Hmmm... maybe I'll have to give the proposition some serious thought!

Nature inspires and invigorates me. Going to and being in nature empowers me. Hopefully, everything I create reflects the beauty around me.

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