and it keeps falling...

It was only when we'd left the mountains on our tantalising trip to the airport yesterday that we realised we'd not witnessed colour in its natural form for weeks. The black and white landscape that forms when snow is endlessly sinking, to disguise the quivering formations that hint the shapes of excavations of where a town might sit, without us acknowledging it, rinses colours that might be somewhere lurking below. It has snowed, non-stop now, for five days, and I have never seen anything like it in my life. Starting up the frozen bus at 6.30am in a pitch black shivering snow infested morning and hacking away at frozen doors + windscreen wipers is becoming the norm now. Negotiating manoeuvres that I'd find crippling at the best of times in thigh high snow- fretting in full awareness that I am surrounded by disguised, weather beaten vehicles; jeering + luring at the shiny metallic surface of my borrowed wagon, daring me to attempt squeezing past them without a trace of contact.. I spent the morning fussing around the chalette trying to remember everything I needed to do, whilst blissfully playing with the baby as often as my time would allow it until it was time to go to snow chain training: an essential knowledge one has to have when operating 2 tonne vehicles on rollercoaster mountain roads. After a gut wrenchingly stressful + comically unsuccessful mission to try + find Weetabix for Baby Bertie, and a toothbrush suitable for a four year old [after getting the bus dramatically stuck in snow in a jam packed village supermarket + pleading with a local French man to help me out] I found myself with some T I M E. Time to what ? Time to do what I do best out in the mountains at twilight : listen to musique and walk and explore. I threw over the car keys with great relief + signed myself off and ventured out into the blizzardous evening. [+ then caught up on five days of B L I P entries}