Took the opportunity to take Katja skiing today.

It was a great time on the mountain. A few great runs in. Lunch and a few more runs. I even tested out the Slalom course, a first for me. The weather was fickle and wet. By 3:30 out outer layers were wet and we called it a day.

Often as it is the case Katja falls asleep on the way home. So this day I again fell into my own thoughts. We passed a great many tress which had suffered fractures due to the recent ice storm. The greatest extent of the damaged trees was near Pleasant Hill. On the way up we counted among the trees 4 fallen telephone/power poles. The way back was different from the drive up in several ways. Among them there were now a number of backyard fire burning mounds of fallen branches. Evidently this practice was so well loved by those of Pleasant Hill and Springfiled that the whole valley from Dexter to Eugene was covered in a yellow haze caught below the ever dripping gray rain clouds. Breathability was noticeably affected and not for the better.

I passed one rather large burning pile and thought that it was rather odd that they didn’t cut it up for fire wood. That way at least the burning would have a purpose beyond clearing the field or yard area. At some point these trees ar seen a “excess” and rather than a limited commodity. Firewood is easy to come by. It’s cheap, maybe too cheap.

In a sense though isn’t the current situation with many of the fallen trees and limbs due to a lack of pruning? Granted we usually only have cold snaps like that once every 15 years or so in this part of the country. But when pruning isn’t done using it a similar perspective that the trees are really “excess”?

Another way that the drive differed was that on the way up Katja was reading Prince Caspian from the Chronicles of Narnia. While she knows the story well from audio books she definitely likes to read.

I asked her what one might learn from a book like Prince Caspian. To which she replied that there really isn’t much one can learn from fiction.

I said that I didn’t think that was true. In fact I thought that there was quite a bit one could learn through fiction. While it maybe not true facts or true events the kinds of decisions and scenarios one is exposed to through the narrative can influence us in indirect ways.

I asked her if she learned about morals at school. To which she replied “no”, to her recollection all discussion about right and wrong was about rules: school rules and classroom rules. Again I followed up with a question. I asked…what makes rules right or wrong? It’s about what we believe isn’t it?