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Show To Every Season 7wst aier FOCUS went to press last week another call was sounded for the first time this season a neighbor came by to ask "Have you heard the cranes?" We hadn't, but did that evening. Since then we have used every excuse to wander about in the fields at dusk looking for the exotic silhouette sil-houette of the sandhill crane. Our meanderings have not yet been rewarded but we have come upon one brilliant bluebird and several seagulls. sea-gulls. Spring begins Friday and it is already getting tough to find skiing partners. All but the most dedicated have turned to bicycling or jogging. jog-ging. Hard to tell which is the lesser of two evils bicycling intoxa snow squall or skiing down to a gravel strewn runout. A change in seasons is also evident in the change of topics to-pics at the local saloon. For instance, tales of incredible feats on the mountain are being replaced by river running bravado. Interspersed Intersper-sed with growing legends of airborne plunges off Snaggletooth are speculations specula-tions about the coming season. Will high water be early? Will there be a ranger on the Green River at Jones Hole? Will there be permits for the Dolores? How fast will Westwater run and how cold? One question has already ' been answered there will be motor trips on the Colorado. If the conversation gets too tame at a dinner party, mention the permit policy on the Colorado. Then stand back. There are people who have waited 4-7 years for their turn to run the river privately. 95 percent of those who have run the Colorado have done so with commercial commer-cial trips. Recently there was a move to alter the ratio of commercial to private permits per-mits by banning motor travel on the Colorado. The suggestion sugges-tion was soundly defeated and at almost any gathering there are sure to be both ' vehement support and op-"position op-"position to the decision. We happened to be at a party recently where the crossfire between an ecology-minded kayaker and the owner of a marina got pretty heated. It was a bicyclist who finally pleaded, ' 'Couldn 't we talk about politics?" A'C |