Cold, and it’s getting colder, gray and white, winter all around. And oh, I must be getting older, all this snow is tryin’ to get me down. These lyrics from an early John Denver song have been floating around my chilly brain while I hike through this powdery new snow. When I began this hike, the storm that dropped about a foot of snow on the park was still managing to produce some snowflakes. It was, as the song says, gray and white, winter all around.

Now, two hours into the hike, the gray snow clouds have pretty much given way to a sky of a few clouds with some blue to add to the afternoon color scheme. What little sunshine that made it through was weak at best. It has now slipped below the western ridge. Cold, and it’s getting colder is now the most appropriate lyric.

The blanket of clouds that turned the park into a world of whipped-cream covered everything also provided some insulating effect, holding in a bit of modest heat. With the clouds dissipating, the thermometer that barely managed to make it into the mid-teens is now on its way down. I can feel the cold working its way through my layers of fleece and wool as I write these lines, like water droplets of a summer storm working their way through layers of branches until they finally reach the still-dry forest floor beneath them. Yes, it is going to be a cold night!

I’ve been watching the seasons change for nearly a half a century, and I still find it nothing less than fascinating. My journal entry for November 18 reveals that I found a blooming Mountain Candytuft (Noccaea montana) along the Devil’s Canyon Trail. A small cluster of four-petaled flowers, creamy white against a backdrop of rich green, spoon shaped leaves. It was still warm and light and gentle enough for this plant to produce flowers. Eleven days later, a dozen inches of cold snow. It is now, unarguably, winter.

John Denver may have spoken accurately of the winter landscape, but his lyric of all this snow is trying to get me down does not speak for me. I may be getting older, but I still love winter. And I have every expectation that I will continue to love winter as I get older. No, I don’t like driving on snowy, icy roads. But the winter landscape offers so much to discover, and notice, and marvel at. And I’ve discovered the key to enjoying winter - getting out in it!

The story being told by the tracks in the snow indicates that I am the only human “getting out in it” along the Tower Trail today. But, I am not alone. Several deer have been zig-zagging through the scrub, looking for something nutritious in this winter landscape. The nibbled twigs of a mountain mahogany indicate that they did find something worth eating.

Another set of tracks does not reveal much detail due to the soft snow, but the size and shape of the track pattern has me thinking fox or bobcat. I follow until I find some detail in some shallower snow beneath a ponderosa pine. The presence of nails says canine, as feline tracks seldom register nails. The size has me believing a red fox – not the smaller gray fox - has been through here not too long ago.
I can feel my facial skin tingle as the temperature continues to drop. I try to balance my close-up observations with some brisk walking to keep the warm blood flowing. Each step produces a squishy sound as my boot crunches the snow. But it is hard to keep moving as there are millions of little works of art that demand my attention. Dark skeleton branches of gambel oak supporting large wads of cottony snow. Drifting flakes from a falling snow clump, back-lit by golden clouds illuminated by the already set sun. The paths of snowballs released from low branches and rolling various distances down the gentle slope above the trail. A vertical slab of orange granite checkered with a chaotic pattern of yellow, green and gray lichens, framed by white powdery snow. Yes, it is winter once again. And I love it still!

~ Dave Van Manen
November 29, 2004