The Commute...

I just stood in my driveway and listened to the foreign sound. It had been months since I had heard it -- the incessant dripping of water running down the rain gutter at the corner of my house. My first emotion was panic. This was it. An entire winters worth of snow was gradually beginning its demise. I wasn't ready for my early morning ritual of skiing to work to come an end. Or the the weekend trips gliding across the snow with my friends. But then I remained still and concentrated on the rhythmic nature of the sound. This was the prenatal voice of summer. At that point a very subtle ripple of excitement came over me as I thought about the endless daylight, birds singing through the night, tundra crunching under my feet, the rumble of thunder across the valley, the fragerance of wild roses in the warm June air.

As I look back at the past 6 months, perhaps some of my fondest memories of the winter were collected during my daily commute to work. A simple trip on a network of groomed trails that extend from my neighborhood to the University. There were no big mountains to traverse or challenging terrain to contend with. Only the conical world that existed just within the beam of my headlamp, the crispness of the arctic air, the cold squeeky snow, the northern lights exploding across the sky, or the occasional moose that blocked my path.

Music - "Litter Bin" by Grand National