Christmas in the Sierras

Christmas is coming!

Snowy little house in the big woods

California has been suffering one of its longest droughts ever.  But just in time for our move-in to this little cabin tucked away in the forest, El Niño roared into the Golden State and hasn’t stopped.  We were buried under more than two feet of snow just before Thanksgiving, and our prayers for a white Christmas were answered in depth, to the tune of more than two feet!

Winter wonderland

Our cousins' trusty quad--thank you, cousins!!

But first, Tia and Sasha were given an early Christmas present by Aunt Simone:  a week in Hawaii at the beginning of December.  Poor babies, they have such a hard life.  It was definitely a welcome respite from the Sierra cold.

Glad to be out of the cold for a little while--thank you Aunt Simone!

The first Christmas-y stop after picking them back up from the airport was Oma Heide’s house, where we made our traditional German Christmas cookies for two whole days.  They were delicious. 

Heidesand, Klosterkipfel, Zimtsterne, and Butter-S:  All delicious!

Just look at those perfect Ss!!!

Next, we needed a tree.  Lucky for us, my cousins had been planting Christmas trees for the past 40 years in hopes of starting a never-materialized tree farm.  We had our pick, and chose a beauty!

The most beautiful tree we've had, ever.

Then the weather started calling for snow again, so Suzi and Ethan got Dana to book us a couple rooms at their timeshare at Heavenly Valley Ski Resort.  My stepdad Rich joined us, and we had four great days of skiing before heading back to GRK.

Thank you Aunt Suzi, for arrnging this fun trip!

The boys are happy,  too.

Next-generation Shush-boomers

Overlooking Nevada's beautiful Carson Valley

We decided to stay at GRK for Christmas, despite my cousin Dana’s tempting offer of celebrating in her gorgeous riverfront estate along with all our Kingsbury cousins.  We’d never celebrated Christmas at the cabin, even after nearly 50 years of building it, and so it seemed about time.  We drove in just in time for the big snowfall to start.

A snowy walk to the Granite Dome

Puppy love:  Blue loves GRK, too!

The jeep gets a snow mustache

And it snowed…and snowed…and snowed.   Big fat flakes that made you want to pull on your snowsuit and toboggan careening down the hill, or make a snow angel, or smack your sister with a powdery snowball.   The cabin was warm and cozy, the fire crackled, and Christmas was in the air along with the smell of gingerbread.

Our beautiful Chirstmas tree, all lit up

Flipper the snow cat explores the deck

Oh the weather outside was FRIGHTFUL!

Click here to see our snug cabin!

To accommodate us all, Todd, Tia, and Sasha worked together to build a long-desired loft.  This is all part of the official school curriculum of Rico Education.  The girls learned a lot!

Click here to see Tia build the loft!

Suzi, Ethan, Todd, Tia, Griffin, Sasha, Ado, and I all spent four winter wonderland days together, comfortably crowded together in the living room (the only room in the cabin we can heat!) and playing in the snow cross-country skiing, sledding, snowball fighting, and taking in the frosty beauty.  All too soon, Suz and Ethan and company had to return to civilization.

Sasha post-snowball fight

Tia cross-sountry skis to Dead Lake

Christmas princess

A wholesome Christmas morning family activity:  Playing Texas Hold 'Em Poker

Then came the rains, along with all our 45 cousins and friends, for New Year’s.  The rain packed down the snow and scotched cross-country skiing, created slush lakes, and made a mess of good snowmobiling.  Dana’s son Trenton drove his snowmobile across Dead Lake, hit a soft spot, and promptly sunk his machine, creating a big make-work rescue project. Luckily it had stopped raining by then, and we had those 45 people in the valley to help!  Our friends Blaise and Emily joined us for New Year’s; we hadn’t seen them in four years, so it was a happy long-awaited reunion. 

Love my friend Emily!!

Pulling the snowmobile from Dead Lake

Cousin Royce brought humungous fireworks from Reno, which we split between the Granite Dome and the meadow.  At 9:30 pm on New Year’s Even, everyone headed up to Granite Dome to light the big fire we’d assembled.  The sparks swirling into the star-studded heavens complemented the boom and splash of the firework show, creating an impossibly beautiful multi-sensory spectacle: heat and frost, silence and shockwave, dark night and bright light, icy air and smoky wood. 

The building of the New Year's bonfire

Click here to see the bonfire and fireworks!

Then we all headed down to the Kingsbury cabin at 11, dancing until midnight, when Royce and friends put on a second fireworks show to ring in the new year.  Despite 45 people in the cabin, there was room to dance and talk and laugh and sing.  What a way to welcome 2017!

Welcome 2017!!

Frontier family

New Year’s Day brought more snow, to the delight of the snowmobiling crowd.  Most of us parked our cars at the top of GRK’s dirt road, but inexplicably, not Blaise.  That engendered another round of make-work project helping his Ford Explorer slip and slide up the icy, snowy road to the paved (and, thankfully, plowed) road.  Moving at approximately 2 miles per hour on the hidden black ice, they drove off with one intact chain, the other having broken off next to the cabin.  It took them two hours to get 20 miles!  But we loved having them and their boys Drake and Roan; we’re positive they’ll return next time supplied with chains.

Hanging out at Granite Dome before the next big snow

More and more and more snow

And then the snow REALLY started.  Two feet…four feet….six feet….seven feet and counting!  El Niño has really shown us something, and the Pineapple Express pattern of rain/snow/rain/snow leaves wild and wacky crevasses on the otherwise gentle road between our cabin and cousin Grethers’ cabin (wherein lies our only internet access!).  All too soon we leave for our planned escape from the snow to head to the Caribbean as promised to the girls.  The only problem: I’m not ready to leave this snow-laden wonderland!

Bundling up for the cold

Our only way in and out of the cabin

Deeper and deeper

Packing out

GRK Valley

Carving pumpkins at Parviz's house: Tia and Sasha's idea of funny

On returning to the U.S., we decided not to move back to our modern custom luxury house in Imperial Beach, but instead left it rented and (to my sister’s horror) snuggled up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  

Ponderosa Pine, the most beautiful of the Sierra trees

Shadow Lake in the Desolation Wilderness, just a few miles from our cabin

Our base for this year (at least until August 2017) will be our cabin in GRK Valley (that stands for Grether Rico Kingsbury, the last names of our family and my mom’s two sisters’ families).  Yes, an isolated little cabin miles from nowhere; you have to walk two miles through huge snowdrifts during the winter to reach it. 

Our little house in the big woods

Living at the cabin has been non-stop excitement:  loading 8 cords of wood into the basement so we wouldn’t freeze (a giant granite fireplace is our only source of heat) and cleaning the cabin of dead mice, spiders, and accumulated debris.  

The kitties have been helping with mice removal.  Count to date:  10 carcasses

Also part of the fun: Tia and Sasha learning to drive the Jeep; felling giant oak trees with Daddy so we wouldn’t freeze (some more), learning to drive snowmobiles and tracked 4x4 quads so we could get out in case of emergency; and enjoying the spectacular beauty of the Sierras in the autumn.

Todd the Lumberjack, Master of the Forest

Tia and Sasha help Daddy

Wild turkeys flood my cousin's neighborhood

First snow arrived on November 17^th, to our utter delight.  Three days later, when it was supposed to melt and we drive out, it began snowing big-time.  

Catching the first snowflakes of the year

We dashed out for Seattle and Thanksgiving at Aunt Simone’s, cats in tow, only to return a week later to more than TWO FEET of crusty powder.  Cousin Dean saved us by bringing us our Sorrell boots, and we hiked in, the cats caterwauling in their cages the whole 2-hour hike. 

Click here to see the cats being towed in.

Sasha turns into a teenager on November 22nd

The Thanksgiving crew

Seattle skyline on the way to visit the French Killians

The next day the girls and I skied out to pile the groceries into big backpacks (thanks again, Dean!  Our savior).  We skied back into the valley under a fading orange-glow sunset, making good time until the downhill part, where I sped up, tried to sit on my poles to brake, bent the poles and flipped upside-down on my backpack like a giant turtle.  During the 10-minute struggle to get up, I felt the sweat?  Melted snow?  Something trickling down my back.  Could it be…was that the gallon of MILK that broke open???  I skied home soaked through the butt and back with $9-a-gallon organic milk.  Luckily, it wasn’t too far.

Hauling in the groceries

We love being out in the wilderness, the silence so deep and mysterious you can hear it flow over you.  The sheer beauty of the giant trees, the crisp air so fresh you can feel it heal your lungs, and the spring water beating anything a bottle could offer make me thankful for this haven and the foresight my dad, my aunts Heide and Traute, and my uncle Toby had.  

Sugarpine glory on the dirt road down to GRK

My father is especially close to me, as he loved this place above all others.  He would have been tickled by the raccoon that showed up, by the call of the coyotes as they ran through the valley one night, and would have shivered with me when looking at the tracks of a big ol’ bear heading up to the Desolation Wilderness to hibernate.

Bear prints in the Desolation Wilderness

My dad loved the solitude of these mountains

And so it goes.  We are home-schooling the girls, to my absolute delight.  Math with Todd in the morning, then science (cataloguing the plants of the meadow and forest, along with molecular genetics), writing using my mom’s book Writing the Natural Way, and catching up on American and California History (a trip to Sutter’s Mill resulted in a few panned flakes of real gold!).   Let it snow!!!!!

Home schooling made easy

Trading flamenco dresses for ski clothes