It’s 4:30 pm. Time to leave for yoga class. I’m not a regular at this class, just a fill in. My friend who hosts the class at her house had texted me earlier in the day. Her husband had SARS and there was a space available. I thought he was sick. Turns out he was at Search And Rescue training (not sure what the last “S” stands for).

It is a clear, sunny day as I drove up my soggy driveway, making ruts in the snow melted wet dirt, up to the road. My road doesn’t have as much sun as the driveway and was still snow covered. It was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride meets a self driving car as the snow ruts would take over guiding me in a zig zag direction. You must be an aggressive driver in this situation in order to not drive off the mountain. No sight seeing or dilly dally-ing. Drive like you mean it…….. at least until a white tail deer or two jump across your path, at which point you must stop and take note if more are coming; leading to both deer and car being in the same place at the same time. Not a good situation for either. I watch the other deer who have not crossed, they watch me, I watch them, they watch me. I inch forward and continue down the hill as they patiently wait. My aggressive snow rut driving continues for several minutes before I’m stopped by wild turkeys meandering slowly down the road. They hear my tires noisily rolling over the half frozen snow, look back, clearly annoyed by my invasion. They cross in an obligatory fashion as more and more and more come up from below the road. It is a large family. A rafter of Turkeys. They live in the neighborhood. Finally I make it to where the pavement starts. No more rutted dirt and rutted snow. This is where I meet Julie. She is already there having had a similar driving experience from her side of the neighborhood.

We take Highway 93 to Rye Creek. Back to the dirt, snow, ice mix. It is slow going. We pass Mule Deer, the bigger cousin of the white tail, grazing on the melted south facing hill side. Elk are probably watching us too, but we don’t see them. It is seven miles to our turn at North Fork of Rye Creek. At just past the junction of Rye Creek and North Fork of Rye Creek we come to our friend’s driveway. We park at the bottom with the yoga teacher and wait for our shuttle up the driveway. The driveway is exactly one mile in length, 500 feet of elevation gain and has five switchbacks. Jen shows up in her UTV; Utility Terrain Vehicle also know as a side by side due to the fact that you sit next to the passenger, like a car, instead of behind the passenger (like a motorcycle or horse, or ATV; All Terrain Vehicle). Just to keep you up on all the acronyms, as I don’t want you to think I have SARS or something. The UTV is meant for two people. We manage to make it a four person UTV. Behind the cab is a two foot bed (like a truck bed, not a bed bed). I sit in the bed. It is a five minute ride up the driveway in the chained up UTV. If it weren’t for the two by four screwed to the floor of the bed I would have been on my ass in the driveway with no one hearing me over the noice of the UTV; it is that steep. I’m surrounded in the two foot bed with yoga mats, yoga blocks and yoga blankets as we all bounce when going over the metal water bars periodically placed in the driveway to keep it from washing down the mountain during the spring melt. One yoga block bounces out of its bag and almost off the back before I catch it and tuck it safely back into its place. The start of the ride is cold. North Fork of Rye creek is a narrow drainage that sees little sun. As we rise up in elevation, the sun peaks over Trapper Peak and adds some warmth or at least the illusion of warmth. Finally we reach the top of the driveway and load our yoga gear into the house, set up our mats and it is now 5:30, time to start the 75 minute yoga class. I’m fifteen miles from home and left an hour ago.

Yoga is delightful and practically worth the adventure to get to it. There are five of us participating as well as a four year old and a four month old. They don’t get it.

As soon as class is over we don our coats and muck boots (boots designed for muck)(muck=half melted snow and ice and mud). And Jen grabs warm blankets for the ride down. Julie volunteers to ride in the bed this time which is an unfortunate choice and a fortunate choice. Unfortunate as in the sun is down and it is colder. Fortunate in that we are going downhill, so she is leaning against the cab the whole way and not having to put her knees in her chin with her feet on the two by four in order to stay in the bed as I did. I ride bitch (middle seat) and have to have my head in the wind shield as there is a gun rack in my back. The UTV is not enclosed, the windows are zipped to the open night air. We are frozen solid by the time we reach the bottom of the driveway. Julie and I jump in her car and get the heat blasting. We drive back to my car. I pull into my garage at 7:30; get the fire roaring in the wood stove, make hot chocolate and read my book. What am I reading? Always a loaded question. I’m reading “Cracked Pots”, the sequel to “The Clay Girl” by Heather Tucker; “Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari and “The Healed Empath” by Kristen Schwartz.

I’m not going to recommend a book this post. I’m going to recommend a series on Netflix, I’m going out on a limb here, but I enjoyed this series so much that I want you to try a season and see what you think. This was recommended to me by my children and it took at least a whole season to have a relationship with the characters, but then we were family. It is a comedy with heartwarming life stories. There are six seasons and I just watched the last episode. Then I watched the documentary about the making of the series and how this sleepy unknown sitcom became an award winning series. I’m recommending the Netfix series “Schitt’s Creek”. Try a season.

More great adventures, and recommendations can be found at Wild About Books.