In these tempestuous autumn days leading up to winter, the weather changes quickly, at the drop of a hat—or, in this case, a snowflake. Last week, temperatures close to 70 were followed by snow. Monday at the cabin, the air temperature was a frigid 22 degrees with a fine cold mist dissolving from the sky, coating the landscape in fragile ice.
The red rosehips had a shiny glaze, while every blade of the tall golden grasses was outlined in white frost, showing off the different patterns of the seedheads—dangling, feathered or spread out like fingers. The hillsides of green pines were dusted with snow, while the bare branches of the aspens and willows were stippled with ice. Graded shades of pale spread across the fields and hillsides.
The creeks were still running but everything else was still, hushed. With Meeker Park sealed in by the low clouds, it felt like the world had shrunk to this small valley, the landscape frozen in time. I hardly dared breathe to disturb it.
But two days later, the sun returned and so did the winds, with gusts of 80 mph. The whole world was shaken loose again, moving in such extreme ways it made me uneasy. On my afternoon walk, I found tall ponderosas snapped in half, and I said a silent prayer for the still standing pine trees. I know they must bend in order to withstand these unreasonable winds, but even the most flexible must ultimately yield to forces beyond their control.
The day before, on the Cub Lake trail in Rocky Mountain National Park (right), fall was nudging into winter. The ponds in the valley bottom were partly rimmed with ice, and the grasses, not yet battered by snow, were bleached of all color—and seemingly life. It feels like nature is pulling in on itself, stripping down to the elemental and getting rid of anything unnecessary before the snows come.
Something in me wants to follow suit. I’ve brought in most of the deck chairs, emptied the rain barrel, stained the decks, put plastic sheets on the windows, brought in firewood from the garage and filled in the holes made by the woodpecker in the outside cabin walls (while the hairy woodpecker watched my futile efforts from a nearby aspen tree).
These days before winter descends, there’s something in the air, not just the sense of clarity and purpose, but an expectation, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. I take a deep breath.
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