Marty’s photo of the day #3877: I am a fan of winter, but only if winter has the decency to drop below freezing and stay there. This winter (in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana) is my least favorite winter in twenty-five years. We get snow—Yay, skiing!—and then it gets warm enough to start melting the snow, before getting cold and turning the snow into ice. And it repeats . . . over and over. The steep, narrow, gravel mountain road Deb and I live on is no longer Blue Lupine Lane. It’s Luge Lane! I’ve lost count of how many times this year I have nearly fallen on my ass while walking on ice. Yeah, I have Yaktrax, but they are the last thing I think about at three in the morning when our dog, Nellie, wakes me up to pee in the woods and search for Bigfoot.

So anyway, here’s a summer photo I took a few years ago, in southwestern Montana. It’s my reminder that ice-season will eventually end.