On Wednesday, the 11th of March, youthful vigor and determination served Timinius well as he groomed the trails to Alturas lake and North Cabin. After all, the ski season was not yet over. The ski club’s two older groomers, however, were not sure about that, still moving very slowly in dazed confusion after the celebrations of Ski Festival Weekend. Thaddeus Sardonicus was heard to mutter that he needed a vacation and had disappeared into some remote wilderness location where he could not be reached by telephone or bicycle. Divinius washed a few soup kettles trying to be useful, but otherwise could do nothing constructive at all. On Thursday, snowmobiling out to pick up the last coolers and tables left over from Sunday’s Alturas soup kitchen, he noted the odd fact that 393 years had passed since Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier, founders of the Jesuits, had been canonized as saints on this day in 1622. Holy Smoke! Divinius had been taught by the Jesuits as a child and his mind was still cluttered with Latin and Greek. Was there anything relevant in there? What was it that Homer, the blind bard, had said about snow in the Iliad? He could barely remember…
Thus on a wintry day the flaky snow
Incessant falls when Jove the treasure opens
Of snowy tempests and of hoary frosts
He scatters o er the world a fleecy deluge
A depth of snow conceals the mountain tops
The verdant meadows and the manur d fields
The banks of rivers and the Ocean’s shores
While the wide main receives into its bosom
A snowy inundation from the skies
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