this town has a mardi gras, but because we are 9000 feet up, and it's late february, we can't really count on good weather. one year it snowed hard and i skipped the whole thing. but this year i'm on the volunteer fire department, and we were drawn in to it, and my daughter was on the truck throwing candy and beads. so i was in, all in.

the fire department used two tenders (they call them), or firetrucks, and one ambulance. the girls along with both the girls' and boys' basketball teams, were at the top of the firetrucks, on the hoses, throwing candy and beads. i was in the passenger seat of one tender, throwing candy and beads. there were lots of beads, maybe more beads than candy. it was a grim, drizzly day but above freezing. the steeper hills were not covered with ice.

to us, that's good news, that roads are clear and that people can actually stand out there. they looked kind of hard-bitten by the winter - this place is the minnesota of the southwest, and winters are long. there were still piles of plowed snow on the walks and in parking spots. people were bundled up but had their kids out there, chasing after the beads and candy. one of the kids was unusually obnoxious. most of them had piles of beads around their necks.

the two firetrucks and ambulance actually occupied spot #13. there were other volunteer fire departments there, and the whole parade was organized around honoring first responders and firefighters. i felt a little guilty, wearing the vfd hat when i've yet to go out on a call, but i do go to trainings, and i helped wash the firetrucks and do some of the work of setting it up. my daughter was ecstatic. it was a huge deal to be on top, throwing candy and beads, and seeing the town from that perspective. she'd been excited about it for weeks.

there was actually a call just as we were getting into town. we had a caravan, going to the parade, of two firetrucks, one ambulance, me in my truck, another truck or two, when suddenly one of the firetrucks pulled over - somebody came to get the chief, who is the main e m t for the canyon we were in. he was needed for this call. didn't matter, mardi gras or whatever, life went on, and somebody had to respond.

in spite of the grim weather, people liked the parade. for one thing, people at least in our valley contributed lots of candy and spread it all over the place. the beads, i noticed, gave mardi gras a unique character, because they were mardi gras colors: dark purple, bright green, bright yellow. at first, since the town was about nine degrees colder than our canyon, i was saying that if you hold a mardi gras at the end of february, you're better off doing it in a place like new orleans, where you can count on slightly balmier weather. people here said that almost every mardi gras, there was some issue with the weather. it was almost as if part of february is not so much frozen and icy, as just unpredictable and variable.

first they said maybe five inches of snow in the town, while just a slight drizzle out in the canyon; then they changed it to rain; then they said rain but maybe later. in fact it started sprinkling around the time we left, at about three. it was a cold drizzle, landing on the street and on the piles of snow, and i thought maybe it would turn to ice, maybe not. it depended really on how much. a fairly warm dry road can take about an inch of that stuff before it turns to ice, but late in the afternoon, temps go down, and the curved roads become slick and cars go off the edge into the ditches sometimes. there's a steady melting of the snow that's already there, and that stuff goes across the roads and tends to freeze as well.

the cloudy sky, though, put me in a kind of reflective mood. i wouldn't trade this mardi gras for the the big one. ours is a small-town deal, trying to get anyone to come up from the valley to enjoy the last of the snow and cold, and give them something to get drunk over, as if they didn't already have enough. much of the crowd in fact looked like they were either just out of the beer tent, or about to go back into it, or both, and i'm not sure if they really had so much beer or what, or if maybe the tent had cajun food and everyone walked over to the bar after that.

but it was mardi gras, one way or the other, and now it's over.