Three days after weather which wasn't a storm, there is still snow on the mountains.

It's coming off in strips, as if something has raked the flanks of the Front Range with huge, half-gentle paws. In the higher reaches, the snow line remains unspoiled, but the further down the slopes your eye slips the more scabby the land, until you reach the prairie flat, and here there's no snow, save an occasional, yellowing clot, sheltered by pods of pine.

The flatlands are for standing on, not walking through. If you picked the wrong direction, you'd be walking forever. The brightest parts of winter are blinding. Light suffuses the air and shines off the ground, making it hard to stare at the mountains or the grass at your feet. Near and far are blurred.

I often want to be everywhere at once. It's a familiar feeling. I'd like to climb to where it's impossible to live. I'd like to sit at the very bottom, looking at the farm machinery and the distillery towers and the bank buildings in Old Town. Life looks real at the bottom. I'd like to wander about half-way, pitched between two equally potent fictions, exploring the foothills and the slopes that lead up and look down at the same time, patched by the storm which, according to those who live here, wasn't actually a storm.