A Birthday Weekend and a Bluebird Day

A birthday weekend, close to home. We started down at Donner Lake, where the sun was low over the water and the snow along the shore has melted back to patches — a strange sight for mid-February, but it made for an easy stop before the rest of the day.

The cake was the centerpiece of the evening: chocolate all the way through, ringed with those little crunchy pearls, her name piped across the top with an exclamation point. Nobody was in a hurry to cut into it.

Then a proper bluebird day on the mountain — not a cloud worth counting, and the whole ridgeline of the Sierra crest showing white to the horizon. The runs were firm and fast in the morning. The birthday girl got the conditions she deserved.