first snows

The first cold of the season blew in Thursday night. I couldn't sleep, so I snuggled up by the fire with my book, listening to the gentle flic-floc of sleet falling onto our chimney top and migrating storks fly due south overhead. 

The snow continued all the next day, making my drive down to work quite exhilarating. When I got back later in the evening, we ate steaming veggie curry by the fire, listening to the satisfying sound of snow sliding off the roofs.

This morning, we awoke to blue skies and white peaks: the first snows of autumn.

Our village, Luz-Saint-Sauveur, beneath the first snows of autumn

This will be my fifth Pyrenean winter. But I'm never quite ready for this, the abruptness of the seasons. What happened to balmy nights, sleeping with the doors and windows open? What happened to foraging for chestnuts and walnuts and mushrooms? What happened to our autumnal rambles in autumnal knitwear?

This being the Pyreneans of course, it only takes the wind to turn and we may well be eating lunches out on the balcony again by next week. That's the way our weather goes down here. But even if it warms up tomorrow, it's too late now. The cold has happened. A new pair of mittens has been cast on. The first fire has been lit.

And we've had our first ski of the season. More on that later...