WS Ursula, Palmer's

The sainted Weather Channel posted the Winter Storm Warnings late last night for a blow they called Ursula, the name derived from a character in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. The word comes from the Latin term for a female bear, ursa—as in the constellation Ursa Major, the Big Bear (and the home of the Big Dipper)—and the storm lived up to bear-like expectations. I got out early, and with my weatherproof Fuji walked the back roads by the dairy farm fields which, as of about 8 in the morning, were rapidly losing their green. For most of the day, the snow dueled with stretches of freezing rain, and by the time it was over, we had several inches of white and frozen stuff on the ground. The only sign of spring was a scattering of Winter Rye shoots that were poking above the snow cover. The moans of folks who just couldn't take it anymore were audible above the wind, but at night, I took my cross-country skis down from storage and hit the trail. I was awed and happy, rather than oy'd.