Kayli Unknown

Chapter 35 - The Ski Weekend

Snow had killed some of Kat's weekends, but it had also made some of them near perfect. If it snowed Friday, guests often canceled for fear of driving to the middle of nowhere and getting stuck along the way. If it appeared it might snow on Sunday, they would also cancel, for fear of getting left at the wrong end of Wisconsin. But if it snowed Saturday, and if it was the right kind of snow, it could be magical.

This weekend, Kat got her magical snow. She also got a pretty good group of women. One seemed to want to show off – perfect skis, perfect outfit, perfect hair. But she settled in fast enough. Friday evening they did the lake trail, and then stood around a bonfire Kat had built on her beach. Easy skiing, warm fire, a couple glasses of water followed by unlimited wine. Kat had sticks for the marshmallows, and everyone had a great time going for the perfect shade of brown.

Marie fed them well, and the dining room had the usual impact – candles, good food, jokes about the musky on the wall. Kat had wine and chocolates in the great room after dinner. Guests wandered up to their rooms between ten and eleven.

Saturday. Saturday started good, and just kept getting better. Marie fed them blueberry pancakes, and got the usual response – just one, well, maybe just one more. There was sun as they did the lake trail one more time, mostly so women could get pictures, and then, as if she had scheduled it, snow began as they took the trail up the logging road. Kat had worked that trail later on Thursday, and again Friday morning. She had the brush out of the way, and tracks around any major rocks. So the trail let them glide with almost every step.

Kat set an easy pace. All the women were able to maintain good strides, and within a hundred yards the skis just did what skis do. And the women, freed from concerns about their skiing, could lift their eyes from the tracks in front of them, and feel the woods around them.

And the snow. Gentle. Powder. Drifting down through the trees and across the trail. Snow in their faces. Snow on their eye lashes. Snow shading and coloring the forest around them.

Kat had established several places for them to stop. She had stepped sideways over an area, flattening the snow so it would be easier for the women to move about in their long, thin skis. These would be good places to rest. Except the women were all pretty good skiers. They didn't need rest. They used the places to stop, look, take some pictures, talk, and look up at the falling snow. The women were all in their mid-thirties to mid-forties – old enough so the kids could be left home, and established enough so they could afford the five hundred dollar fee. But at each of the stops, they looked more like grade school kids, tongues out to taste the falling snow. Smiles, quiet conversations, long looks up into the sky or off into the woods.

Kat never pushed groups too far. Tired guests didn't have fun. She had guessed how far they might get in about ninety minutes. It turned out they made so many stops and took so many pictures, it was almost two hours before they got there, but the place always worked for Kat. Marinette County is pretty flat, but she had found a section of logging road that gradually curved up to a ridge overlooking a wide valley. Some of the valley had been logged a decade or so before, so second growth was still small enough that guests could see a fairly long way down to a distant pond. It wasn't Yosemite Valley, but it was a pretty good view. As soon as the skiers had made it up the hill and caught their breath, they had their cameras out.

Kat had hung most of their lunch the day before. Bears and most everything else was hibernating, but you never knew who might be out and hungry, so she hung her food high between two trees. It took her a few minutes to set things up on a tarp, but she lowered down baguettes, cheese, fruit, a dozen water bottles, and a dozen family-size chocolate bars. She also had tarps for women to sit on, but she noticed several took stumps.