Burning Bridges Like Matchsticks

First snow of the season, first real snow, first time the city has woken up and found itself muffled and soft, first time deadlines and the morning commute are subsumed, if only for a moment, by deeper and more chance agencies than one's manager.

I skip work in the morning, throw dusty skis into snow. There are moments of hesitation; it's been at least a year since I last did this, but the shifting of weight soon becomes unconscious, and I glide down a road thinly coated with snow, listening to the muted slap and creak of my skis and the occasional rasp of pavement below them. On skis, the subtleties of topography are magnified and the ground that feels flat underneath a booted feet reveals a host of troughs and barrows. I crest a rise that is, at best, a foot above the surrounding terrain, the grade a paltry inch every ten feet. As I kick off I can feel the otherwise imperceptible drop, and suddenly, I'm flying, every kick pushing me further and faster than before.

I follow a twisted sidepath, breaking fresh tracks in the deeper snow of the trails. Halfway to the end of it, the path winds through a deep clump of brush, hanging over it like a tunnel. The brush is full of robins. There are dozens, red-jacketed and alien against bright snow and dark branches.