Blow, Thou Winter Wind

Blow, blow thou winter wind.*

Here I am wondering with anticipation when I will next be in the quiet pines and deep snows of the Wasatch. That bitter, cold dawn when the sleepy mountain wakes from a fitful, windy sleep under the canopy of winter stars and soft moonlight. Myself, not unlike the mountain, trudging through the depth and through the bite, upward through the night.

I wonder when again the powder will spray into my face, leaving a village of icy squatters clinging to the beard, frozen and tangled, having to wait until the thaw of the heater can jar them loose from their desperate hold. When again the rising sun will reveal the wind blown cornices and the flocked evergreens and that velvet blanket of untouched, immaculate, sparkling marzipan – a frosted fantasy world of sky and snow.

I look from the valley floor to the peaks and the ridges, and immediately crave that weightless and uncontrollable joy that erupts from deep within, a volcanic explosion of incomprehensible delirium found only, it would seem, during those elusive days in backcountry powder. When again?

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky.*

*William Shakespeare, As You Like It.