First Snow

The sun continues to diminish, but the land has become brighter.  I awake in the morning to fresh snow throughout the valley floor. Clouds cover the mountain sides and tiny flakes intermittently fall throughout the morning.

Gone are the last vestiges of fall.  No longer do Leaves rustle beneath a passing boot or with movement of the wind.  Buried beneath a thin layer of snow, they are muffled. Here is the season of unrestricted travel.  The season where snow is crumpled beneath boots.  The season where snow and ice covers tussocks, swamps and paths of water, creating natural highways.
Gone are the dark night skies of September and with it, all the mythical and imagined beasts that lay hiding in the trees, beyond the edge of light. Here is the blank canvas.  The canvas that tells the story of the lives and travels that pass when we are not looking.

Gone are the tools and toys that lay strewn around the yard.  Buried underneath the snow, they won’t surface again until spring.  Here is a freshening of the landscape, a covering of all its bruises and scars.

Gone are the long days of light and the warmth that comes with it.  Here is winter, bringing its beyond freezing temperatures and long nights plastered with stars and wisps of aurora.

So begins the defining season of the north.