more Harumi...

Harumi seems to want me to stretch myself.....she asks in a really nice way if I want to take a little walk (I don't of course, but she is so cute, how can I say no) so she took my skis (she has "skins" on hers...felt things that enable her to basically walk up hill) and she asks me if I am cold or hot or hungry or thirsty and we go. At one point I was on my hands and knees with poles in one hand, crawling up rocky, slippery, something that felt very much like a bad clip from a K2 movie. Honestly if i had looked, I would frozen. She claims nothing could have happened...that I was not on the edge of a cliff, but it felt like it. At the top, (see me in the picture with the cross) one gets to write one's name in a book. (this is kind of a thrill) so I write: EBW from California, and HARUMI.
Then down we go...and we are completely alone and it is so strange and beautiful to be alone-such a rarity and I think- kind of an honor. I have a theory though that these mountain guides can sometimes get so caught up in the snow that they forget they have a flailer behind them....The drill is, she goes first and I am supposed to go exactly next to her tracks...that way the risk of avalanches is controlled (she in essence goes first so I will be safer) and we preserve snow for other people and also I can see if the terrain is rocky or weird or whatever. But sometimes I feel the need to go a slightly different way- rogue if you will. After I had done this a few times, she kind of woke up and said, um Errie...you need to go right next to mine. But she is so blissed out and blinded by her love of the fluffiness that this was almost a secondary thought to her. Me, i love the stillness. Yes it is fun to go through a field of powder....but I am not sure it is as fun as following her down a run as fast as I can maybe at the end of a day...close to crashing and close to topfen strudel.

Photos at last

From Left to Right: Harumi holding her little box with some hello kitty like symbol on it, and chocolate; me at the top of a hike; thomas a few days ago in deep snow.

More later...xoxo