Remember, Remember, the Something of November

A few weeks ago I went climbing around in the mountains a bit near the little village of Angry Waters. The town's not really more than a scattering of houses along a stretch of valley, but it's some of the scarce reasonably flat ground in the area, being on a small plain between two rows of tall hills. The weather was still being Autumnal at the time and the strong winds hadn't started yet, so the trees still had a goodly number of leaves on them.

The area is very rocky, with all sorts of odd rock formations to go climbing around on and strange looking boulders sitting around in random arrangements. Yet the trees still manage to cope, exploiting any little crack even in sheer rock walls. And so the Appalachians have been gradually worn down to what they are today.

Not long after that day, though, Winter decided that it wanted to make an early start on things. So we had sleet, and snow, and sleet, and snow, and sleet, and more snow, and lots of wind as well. By the time the latest snow stopped falling, we had about half a foot of it piled up on the ground. The birds have not been pleased, and now spend most of the day camped out around the bird feeders squabbling. The kitten, on the other hand, is finally in her element. Sort of. At last she blends in to the scenery, which before only Abby could really do. But her amazing new camouflage abilities come at the cost of having to drag her little fuzzy tummy through cold wet icky snow. And so both of the beasties have been spending most of their time indoors of late, getting into whatever mischief they can find and demanding that one of us make the snow go away again.

The garden is pretty much no longer gardeny, being some low piles of dirt with tattered shreds of dead vegetation poking out of the snow. At least the lawn won't need much mowing now. And the grape vines keep getting turned into rather interesting ice sculptures.

I decided to go out for a walk along the same route I took on my walk in October, and to see what some of the same scenes look like after all the snow. So here are photos taken from approximately the same angle as some of the October photos. I leave it up to the reader to match picture with picture. . .

Trestle Bridge 2

Farm 2

Slope 2


Pasture 2

Trail, part 2, part 2

Crossroads 2

Lake 2

Ice Crystals 2


I also took a few other photos while I was out there.

Dragon tracks!
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Clouds.

More ominous looking clouds.

Farm stuff.

PreChristmas tree!

You can't fence in the snow!

Last Friday was the day of Wolf Hills' big annual Christmas parade. This year it was only about half the size as it was in previous years, due to various changes in registration requirements and fees. And for a little while there was some question as to whether or not the parade would even happen, what with all the ice and snow (that's what you get for constantly playing songs like "White Christmas" and "Let it snow!"). But I took a walk around the town around midday, and saw that the various vendors and workers were out preparing for the event. So the parade was still on.

The town was all decked out in its holiday finery for the occasion. Even the trains in Necromancerville were looking festive. Nobody had bothered to decorate our newly acquired Official Town Caboose, though. It still looks as bedraggled as it has all along. But workers had been working workerishly for the last few days putting up all sorts of wreathes and tinsel and weird things around Main Street and the different parks elsewhere, which looked even more Christmasy with the scattering of snow that still remained.

One of the town inns.

The Farmer's/Farmers'/Farmers Market, some banks, and mountains in the distance (beyond which is Angry Waters and its valley).

Main Street.

The Theatre, complete with magical tree growing out of its roof.

A lurking gazebo.

The "new" Methodist church.

A door. . .to another dimension?

A house that I like.

Our renowned county courthouse, complete with generic Confederate Soldier Monument.

The view southwards down Courthouse Hill.

Mother Nature does not approve of speed limits.

It is an annual tradition that the lady whom I'm boarding with host a whole swarm of her relatives from the area. She's the only member of her close family who lives in town, so everybody gathers at her house to have a big dinner, gossip, and watch the Christmas parade. That evening the house's population went from two people, two cats, and one millipede to over two dozen people (including a large number of hyperactive kids from 4 to 9 years of age), two traumatised kitties who spent lots of time hiding, and one millipede who didn't care what was going on as long as he had his zucchini.

So we ate and talked, and talked and ate, and ate while talking and talked about eating, and I ran around with the kids a bit, and I helped the cats hide a bit, and then all the kids and about a third of us non-kids went out to see the parade. It was after dusk by then, and windy and below freezing, so we were all bundled up rather heavily. Two of the kids didn't even have Winter clothing, so they were wrapped up in pretty much every spare blanket that the house contained and sort of waddled down the street without the ability to use their arms or hands.

The kids fussed around long enough that they missed the first quarter hour of the parade (and they were most put out at the thought of all that candy being thrown around that they missed out on), but since the parade route was passing by just around the block from the house we were able to find a good spot on the sidewalk to watch the remainder of it passing by. It wasn't the best conditions for photography, but I took a few pictures anyway.

There were probably about 60 floats in all, pulled along by pick-ups or built onto flatbeds.
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There was also a long line of fire trucks and ambulances from Bridgeplace, Ash Sham, Smelly Springs, and many other area towns. I have no idea how many cats remained stuck in trees overnight due to the lack of on-duty fire trucks in the region.

Then there were marching bands, who were marching along rather quickly to try to keep warm in the 15°F wind. The police cars blocking the intersections added a nice otherworldly glow to things. And if you look closely in the middle of this picture, you'll see a short girl trying to play a French horn while wearing gloves, which reminded me of a certain person whom I know of.

After much loot in the way of candy, plastic throwing discs with the names of banks emblazoned upon them, and vague rambling religious tracts had been gathered, the assembly returned home and thawed out in front of the fireplaces with hot chocolate. Eventually everybody extraneous left (much to the cats' relief) aside from three of the kids who were spending the night. And so peace once more descended upon the town of Wolf Hills.