I’ll tell you a little of what’s been happening lately. For one thing, December has happened. My sunny November suddenly turned into a December Eve last Sunday afternoon and bang! — it snowed a little and got cold — really cold.

It got cold enough the past few days that the water froze in my wildlife drinking buckets. Yes, I’ve been watering deer. A couple of doe deer have been “imprisoned” inside the fence of a field behind my house.

They were able to leap the fence to get in, but they seem unable to muster the courage to leap back out. The problem is that there might be a little height difference from one side to the other. It’s not the first time this problem has occurred.

The property is owned by an out-of-area owner and efforts aren’t always successful to make the contact to get the locked gate opened up. So in the meantime, I feel sorry for the animals and that feeling puts me on watering duty.

As luck would have it, or due to divine intervention, or due to the universe coming to the rescue (I don’t know which), something good happened. I was able to make contact with someone from the Division of Wildlife Resources who may be able to do something on behalf of the trapped deer. It’s weird how things happen sometimes.

I’m talking about a chance meeting with a young couple on a bridge over the Colorado River last week. As we were leaving Moab from our “Thanksgiving getaway,” we decided to take a walk by the river. As we were attempting to take a selfie picture on the bridge, a couple on bicycles stopped and offered to take the picture.

The picture was taken and we had a little conversation. It turned out that the young man was the son of a Division of Wildlife administrator. A phone number was shared and a call was made and a message was left. On Saturday night, I got a phone call back and was told that a “biologist” would be alerted to our deer situation. So, I’m hoping that I’ll soon be out of the wildlife watering business.

Our old friend, the late, great, Bill Nehrenz, used to always say, “When you have a problem, put it out to the universe; a solution will come.” And I used to sometimes, in good humor, say, “Yes, but your friends seem to be your universe and we’re getting tired of being the solution to your problems!”

Some of you are possibly really long time readers from back in “The Pyramid” subscription newspaper days. You may remember that Bill started out with me as a co-writer of this column. That was more than 30 years ago. He wrote under the “by-line” pen name of Calvin Hobbes.

He felt like some people might get riled up by some of his views and didn’t want to use his real name. I had introduced him to the comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes” and that’s where his pseudonym was derived. He was so taken by the wit and wisdom of that comic that he got a little tattoo of the tiger Hobbes put on his shoulder.

Other stuff that has happened lately was that trip to Moab. It so happened that my wife and I may have gotten a clue that our aging process has continued to progress despite us ignoring it. I’m talking about mountain bike riding now.

We were on our own for the Thanksgiving holiday. The kids were all occupied otherwise, so we consulted Archer, the ancient, wonder Sheltie dog, and got the okay for an adventure trip to Moab. Archer seemed to say that as long as we booked a pet-friendly motel with good “exercise and relief” areas, he was game for the trip. La Quinta fit the bill.

On Thanksgiving day, we motored out to Dead Horse Point State Park. A website we’d looked at, which specialized in finding easy bike trails, motivated our trail choice. Our pedal-assist mountain E-bikes were fully charged, and so were we. We didn’t consult the map at the park carefully. That was a mistake.

We chose to ride the “Big Chief” trail which has fabulous views over the canyon. The first third of the loop ride was quite easy. We only had to dismount the bikes once or twice. The second two-thirds was beautiful, but turned into a bit of the “ride from hell.”

We dismounted and walked so many times, we stopped counting. But, we did count our crashes — Merrill 1, Diane 3. I’ll be quick to say; there were no broken bones. For me, it was a bit of a bonk on my knee. For Diane, it was “black, blue and Band-Aids.”

Looking at the map, as we were in the thick of our challenges, we discovered that we were on an “easy/more difficult” (green circle/blue square) trail. People on the trail told us that in Moab you should always raise the difficulty level up one notch from whatever the trail is designated.

Next time, we’ll probably stick with the white circle (easiest) and green circle trails. I don’t see in my future any black diamond or double black diamond trail rides.

We got back to Moab in time to dress our wounds and take pain medication before our dinner reservation at “The Broken Oar” restaurant. Franklin, our good natured, happy waiter, boosted our spirits and brought us turkey and prime rib dinners. The meals were wonderful. Pumpkin pie “hit the spot.”

I remembered, as I often do, that my father-in-law was a generous tipper. In that remembrance, Franklin got a good Thanksgiving Day tip. He deserved it.

Besides the money, I could have told him in the way of “tips,” “Look both ways before you cross the street” — “Don’t spit into the wind” and… “Double check your bike trail maps and pack lots of pain medication.”

— Merrill