Ice Storm by Squires
This evening, even the restaurant closed early. Driving up Main Street and Draper, I caught this frame in front of the campus student center. The pair of students walking off toward the library were the only pedestrians out that evening. The Norway maples were bowed heavily by the ice load.
More power and phone lines would go down this night. What were once beautiful expressions of nature in winter were fast becoming pain-in-the-ice storms for most everyone. It did occur to me that the A.T. was probably just as trashed by the weather. Being only vaguely familiar with Trail crews, I wondered how ugly the hiking would be in a month or less.
I had made friends with Vixen from '93 and Teresa Martinez, the regional A.T.C. manager out in their satellite office in Narrows - just a short backroad hop from my house on the river. Both were instrumental in my preplanning during the non-icey stretches of late winter and early spring. They also coordinated the trail crew who would be out with the picks, mattocs, machetes, saws, gloves and sweat to clear the trail for us hikers in a few weeks. True trail love.