The Dead of Winter

It is a holiday weekend and the dead of winter is anything but.

The morning had been filled with a sea of colors, moving in a rhythmic synchronization. In their midst, you listen for words of note, and search for faces familiar. You share a goal of reaching the front of this maze so you can climb into the sky for a brief journey. Once airborne, images flash underneath, some in harmony with the environment and others in juxtapose. Flying downhill on a pair of skis can be a most unnatural natural experience.

In the heart of the day, when fatigue, cold and hunger find themselves as temporary companions, locating a seat in the lodge to rest and consider, proves most elusive. Empty chairs are no longer empty once you reach them. You find yourself willing others to chew a little faster and almost levitating them with your mind. You make friends with strangers and ask them, ever so gently, if you might share their space. You are grateful for their kindness.

And then onward you go, finding and losing greatness in every turn. It is there, resting in your fingertips, and then, like a magic trick, it disappears. Failure and success, as partners.There is an energy and a purpose in every action, and in the effort there is the greatest of rewards.

And as always there is the inevitable conclusion, when all that happened becomes history; when the layers that sheltered you from the elements and allowed you to embrace them, are removed; when tales begin to take shape. It is the end but not an ending, only a pause awaiting the chance at repetition.

As this day gathered its ski-flock in the first light , so it will disburse them into the evening There will be an enormous long tailed, many eyed slithering monster wending its way ever slowly out of the rutted parking lot at the mountain's base, and meandering through town before disintegrating into a thousand pieces.