Yule Time

Went back to my place of birth in Colorado for the holidays, and I needed it more than ever. To walk out on the bluff beside my parents house, sage brush dolloped with fresh snow everywhere and the peaks across the valley shrouded in white, disappearing and then reappearing, a sign of very cold air, and impending snow. To talk seriously with nephew Patrick about Gaboon Vipers and animals that start with the letter U. To curl up in my bed at the top of the house and lay there in the dark watching the moonlight on the snow and the tiny lights of faraway snowcats, 10 miles up the valley at the ski resort, going up and down restoring order to the slopes, until I fall asleep and then the dawn breaks all cold and blue.

"Christmas morning" started at 6:30 a.m.—as it often does with a kid in the house, but it wasn't terrible getting up in the dark to tear up colored paper over steaming coffee.

And for Christmas—powder. A powder day with my dad, actually. How many of these I've had in my life, I can't be sure, but they're very valuable. It really was a kinda magical morning, I won't lie—the light sparkling off every single thing, including ice crystals hovering in the air shining like diamonds in the shafts of sunlight.

I grew up driving in the snow ... but fuck THIS!