On The Road with Mike Drew: Slow ride, take it easy

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I didn’t really mind that it was snowing.

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There wasn’t all that much of it coming down, just a light dusting of tiny flakes that landed on the dry grass and willows along the road. It had been falling since some time in the night so there was a bit of accumulation but it wasn’t a lot, certainly not enough to make the roads hard to drive on or obscure the landscape.

I didn’t even mind that it was cold, either. At -18 C it wasn’t as viciously cold as it had been a month ago and coming off a long stretch of warm, windy weather, it actually felt nice to have a little tingle on my face and fingertips.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely prefer the warmer days but a couple of days of real cold are fine. Especially if they look like this.

I was out west of Airdrie, just idling along with no actual destination in mind. The only choice I’d made when I left the city was that I would head west and, with the snow sifting down, it didn’t really matter where to the west I went.

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So here I was, slowly driving along a side road that twisted among pothole ponds surrounded by willows and grassy meadows that shone in the shadowless light. The thin cover of fresh snow was white where it had built up but with all the browns of the dry grass and the reds and oranges of the willows, the majority of it was colour of cream.

It made the subtle tones of the lichens stand out on the willow branches and matched the soft beiges, greys and browns of the mule deer that were watching me as I took their pictures. I could see little puffs of breath as they exhaled and tiny avalanches of snowflakes sliding down their ribs as they walked along.

It took me nearly half an hour to drive maybe 5 kilometres and I would have just kept idling along but I hit a stretch of pavement so I had to make a turn. The windows went up to avoid windchill at highway speed — they’d been down to avoid heat ripples softening my pictures — but they were back down again once I hit the Dogpound Creek valley.

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There was just the tiniest bit of breeze down here, barely enough to jostle the snow as it fell. It was even lighter now, the flakes fewer and smaller. But they still managed to accumulate on the dry leaves, rose hips and branches and add a little extra shimmer to the willow catkins that are starting to appear.

Truly the first flowers of spring, they puff out as the hours of daylight increase and they are getting more numerous now. Still, they won’t fully emerge for another month or so but their silverly shimmer is already starting to brighten the red willow stems.

The snow was still falling as I crested a ridge a little further on and through the mist of flakes I could see an eagle perched in a tree far across a pasture. A magpie was sitting on an adjacent branch and I could tell through my long lens that it was yakking at the eagle. The eagle was ignoring it. I love magpies.

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I watched them for a few minutes and then dropped down into the Dogpound Creek valley again and headed up to a spring seep that I remembered.

It, unfortunately, was covered with snow and ice. First time I’ve seen it like that. Maybe the dry fall slowed its flow.

But the road I was on passed through a stand of spruce that grows in the near-perpetual shade of a north-facing slope so I slowed the truck to a crawl to see what I could see.

There were long, dry stalks of cow parsnip, the seed heads on top of them spread out in a crown and cradling little puffs of snow. Lichens hung long and fluorescent green from the lower spruce branches. A squirrel nattered from somewhere in the branches above. A horn honked.

A horn honked?

I’d been driving so slowly and was so intent on looking for things among the trees that I didn’t notice that a vehicle had eased up behind me. The road was narrow and unplowed so they couldn’t just pass and I was hogging the middle. It wasn’t an impolite honk, just a tap to let me know that they were there.

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I immediately pulled over as far as I could to let them pass and I waved an apology as they did. Not sure the driver saw me so, just in case you happened to be piloting a red Dodge van out by Bottrel on Tuesday afternoon, sorry about that.

I rolled on now as the snow continued to sift down. Willow bogs and stands of spruce were dusted with flakes and the pastures had that same amber glow that I’d seen earlier with the colour of the dry grass tinting the thin, white cover.

I was getting close to Winchell Lake now but before I got there I turned onto Deersprings Road. I was hoping that, unlike the springs that I’d just been at, the little spring-fed creek that runs beside the road would still be trickling.

And it was.

This is one of my favourite places in the foothills and I come here far too often. And, truth to tell, I usually end up shooting the same pictures whenever I do. But it is so hard to resist those feathery filigrees of frost that form on the grass and sticks along the banks and the splashes of green from watercress and algae that grows in the flowing water.

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And, bonus, I almost always have this little valley to myself. On this day, in fact, there was nothing but deer tracks on the road, the fresh snow lying there nearly unsullied. I kinda felt a little bit guilty as I piloted the FJ slowly along.

From Water Valley on westward, though, I didn’t have that concern.

The traffic, while not exactly at city level, was steady. And the snow had quit falling.

It was actually sunny over toward the Little Red Deer River and mule deer were out on the open slopes looking for food. The dry grass still had that amber glow but without the light snow to diffuse it, it just looked, well, dry. The snow itself had lost that creamy tint and was plain white with a slight blue tinge from the open sky above.

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Not a bad look by any means but I was enjoying the softness of the day and this sudden change to harsh shadows and cooler colours was jarring.

I didn’t have to continue very far to the west to find the snow falling lightly again, though.

Over toward Grease Creek it was sifting down and softening the light on the landscape. I stopped at a place just off the main road to watch it fall around young pine trees and tall poplars as the sun popped in and out from behind the clouds. They were moving fast up above me but down along the ground, the breeze was still light.

I would have kept going from there over to the lovely Harold Creek valley but there was an active log haul going on. After the third truck passed me, I turned around. I was enjoying the day too much to have to deal with them blasting by.

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The day was rolling on now so even though the hours of daylight are getting longer — sunset at 5:30 these days! — it was time to think about heading back to town. The snow continued to sift down as I went, vying with the patches of sunlight that were sneaking through to see which would dominate.

I passed a lot full of cattle having their afternoon feed, the mommas interrupting their meal to stare at me with breath steaming from their nostrils while ravens that had been scavenging among them when I pulled up perched in the trees close by. Down in the Little Red Deer River valley it was full-on sunny again while, just up the road, the same mule deer I’d seen an hour before were now nestled on the edge of the hillside meadow in lightly falling snow.

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And so it went as I drove along. As the sun settled toward the west it was finding breaches in the cloud cover, backlighting the falling snow in spots and obscured by clouds in others. Up near the headwaters of Dogpound Creek it did both. The snow continued to fall from overhead while clouds stuttered the sun’s glow as they passed.

North of Cochrane, the sun won. The sky overhead cleared and the snow stopped as the sun dipped toward the mountains so I turned south on the first road I could find to see if I could get the sunset’s glow on the fresh snow.

There was no glow. The sun just dropped behind a cloud bank and was gone. The light turned a crepuscular blue.

So I turned around and started heading back to town.

But I didn’t get far before I saw something big and dark in a patch of willows.

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It was a moose. It was nipping off willow buds and sending little cascades of snow from the branches as it did. I’d been enjoying the soft light all day but now I was wishing the sun would come out again and backlight that falling snow as the moose fed.

Alas, it did not. But that was fine. Just watching the moose feed was enough. How many willow buds would it take to fill that huge belly? I literally couldn’t imagine. With him was another, much smaller moose. This guy, unlike the big boy, still had his antlers. They’d fall off soon, just like they had on his companion.

I rolled on now, leaving the moose to their meal, and saw three more as darkness fell. Crystals of snow hung in the red glow of my taillights as I drove.
Mulies and moose, willows and spruce, frost along spring creeks, soft light and a soft breeze. Okay, true, it was right around -20 C now but I was warm inside the truck.

It had been a wonderful day for a slow drive in the light snow.