Hoary nights

Awakening this morning
it felt like a magical Yukon Jack time - in visage - with the frozen fog enwhitening everything outside. We think of Jack at times like this. We considered a snippet, but it was only 7 AM, the sun not being anywhere near past the yardarm. Yes, the famed great advertising motto on the liquor bottle flew into mind, though the old bottle was up in a high cabinet gathering dust: "Yukon Jack is a taste born of hoary nights when lonely men struggled to keep their fires lit and their cabins warm."

This frost may not have been truly hoary. Perhaps hoar frost is born of a different sort of brief temperature inversion. The internet had a lot of information on it and some great images of crystallized hoar ice.

What we had was not hoar, we gather, but it was suffficient unto the day to cause us to bring down the bottle, photograph it for the raccoon news and set it aside for later.*

Some time back, there were three young close friends who adopted Yukon Jack as their official drink. One of the three was 'we'. When Cathy died, after the funeral in Fond du lac, Tom and I went XC skiing in Marinette County. Stopping on the way we visited Cathy's fresh grave. We took our bottle of Yukon Jack which was to be used at the cold cabin where we were headed and extemporaneously, ceremoniously and reverently poured the golden contents slowly over Cathy's mound of soil.


Scene across the street in Waukesha and one of our front trees at 7 AM Sunday, 1-17-10

Back door bell, with frost;

it all lasted such a short while......

Raccoon footprints as we emerged from the back gate.

* For later.....