Reflections on a Fall well spent

30˚ and steady snow.

Today had an air of significance for me, for no reason other than I can say it truly feels like winter. Bozeman has had snow on the ground for well over a week, I've hit the double digits in ski days, and there is well over 3 feet of snow in the bridgers at this point, so it might seem silly that my eyes have only opened today, but up until now, there feeling of the past two weeks has been nothing short of surreal. I suppose it was a fairly rapid transition from riding bikes to skiing, 6 days after my (unbeknownst to me) last ride of the season, the Bridger range was completely blanketed in snow, and my bike has not left its corner since. While riding my bike to class this morning though, I was hit with a deja vu: something about the piles of melting snow and dead leaves, something about the wind - a stiff headwind is not something that occurs quite as often (and while I do not miss it in the least, pedaling in a stiff breeze does bring a pang or two of nostalgia), and something about the crisp dry air, was the exact feeling that I would used to have riding down fourth street to spend the day sitting in desks thinking about skiing. Funny how, a couple years later and 800 miles away, not much has changed.

I walked into my last class of the day at 3:30, the sky was no longer spotted with the high lenticular clouds of the morning, but was rather smothered in a sloppy grey blanket, hovering a thousand feet up. When I walked out of the lecture hall, two things struck almost instantaneously. One, it was very dark - class did not get out late - no it was 5:00, but the sky had practically no light left, and... it was snowing. Ah, thats what winter is like. By my estimates, winter is four inches deep on the ground outside, and I would reckon there is a good deal more in the hills. And for me, its not a bad deal that there's more a coming.