Winter Winds

My sister Yuki lifts the lowest wire of the fence, and Piko squirms under first, leaving tufts of his white fur snagged in the barbs. Mom goes next, I follow her, and Yuki comes last, each of us barrel rolling beneath the fence and into the rolling pasture land beyond it. The wind whips our hair into our faces, and the thick, uneven grass looks golden-green in the late afternoon light. Piko is already bounding toward the hill, ecstatic. He knows where we’re going, and pauses occasionally to make sure we are following.

Fresh tracks

Saturday:
I love looking out the window of a plane and taking in the landscape below.  I'm twenty-two now, but I press my face to the cold double plastic like a child, because no matter how many times I fly, it's still fascinating to see everything in miniature. Sometimes I glimpse clumps of carefully diagrammed neighborhoods, dotted with trees that belong in an architect's model. Later it's miles of patchwork farmland. From above, the fields are sharply demarcated by their varying hues of green and brown. I've always presumed that this is because of different crops and phases of growing and harvest, but I can't be sure. My favorites are the circular fields that interrupt the monotony of right angles. They look friendly and out of place. I tried to paint it once, but my watercolor skills weren't up to the task.

I can't resist smiling as we float over mountain tops, the sun glancing across the first snow I've seen since the wintery mixes of spring in Washington, D.C. But this is snow of an entirely different sort. It cloaks the crumpled skin of the earth in brightness, and I imagine crunching through it and leaving deep footprints in its pristine surface. As we cross a mountain range, I pick out the slopes I think I could snowboard down, and nod respectfully to the ones I know would kill me.

As we reach the edge of the bare, rugged wilderness, I pick out the houses at the far edges of towns, and wonder what the people living in them feel when they turn their backs to civilization to look out on the vast emptiness that blooms from their back yards. Are they ever overwhelmed? As we begin our descent, the buildings huddle closer together, drawing each other near. I see baseball fields in clumps of threes and fours, home plates at the center, and I strain without luck to see the tiny players rounding the bases. Lower still, I watch the ebb and flow of traffic. Where are you headed, little car, on this bright, blue Saturday? Have you driven from your doll house to the farmers market, today just a thumbnail cluster of tent canopies? Do you see me up here in the sky?

We land with a rumble of tires on asphalt. Maybe it's the soy latte I had in Phoenix, but I'm feeling a little giddy. Here I am, Colorado! Let's have an adventure.