Seeking to expand our hiking horizons and see more of Montana, we spent the weekend at a campground near Seeley Lake and hiked to Morrell Falls. I was loaded for bear but… ran into something else.

I saw a couple of robins the other day. This, by itself, probably isn’t worthy of a blog but, along with the robins come other creatures. Some great, some small and some with very long claws.

For my first 62 years I didn’t think much about avalanches. They weren’t much of a risk on the Tappan-Zee Bridge (I refuse to call it the Mario Cuomo bridge). There was also little chance of me being caught in one in the Bronx or on the training ship. Things have changed, these days I find myself checking the avalanche forecast each winter morning.

They had been avoiding us for the past two years. When glimpsed at all, it was from far away and they were usually trotting quickly over the hill. Alert as always, they saw me before I saw them. This winter though, they have crossed our property almost daily.

​There’s a school of thought that says snow covers the ground, hiding what’s underneath. On the contrary, snow is like a magnifying glass, a window on wildlife that we almost always miss in the ‘uncovered’ months.

Some things you never get tired of. Some things are just as cool the last time as they were the first time. Coming home from an evening meeting I startled ten to twelve elk on our driveway. They trotted out of the way. Some were on the edge of my headlights, others were large specters moving off in the dark.

​If you’ve been following this blog or my Facebook posts you know we moved from New York to Montana. I don’t regret a minute, but there are a few things missing here.

​I get bored easy. They told me I would miss work, haa. I haven’t been bored yet. Retirement is not only about the things you don’t have to do anymore (ie commute in traffic, go to stupid meetings, smile at your boss), it’s about doing cool things you want to do as opposed to all things you had to do. One of the things I like to do now is Habitat-for-Humanity. It’s like watching/helping someone’s dream take shape.

​The most difficult search and rescue calls seem to come at the most inconvenient times. It was after 8 PM when the call came in that an 80-year old woman with dementia had left her home and was missing. It was getting dark and time was ticking away.

The need became apparent when my wife Kat convinced me that a garage should be used for parking cars and not for man-projects. Our first Montana winter here confirmed she was correct. At first, I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew. But then, how do you know how much you can chew until you take a bite?