I’ve maintained high running mileage all winter not as a means of self-flagellation (although it might appear that way to most observers of my daily mountain ambulations), but as the currency of commitment with which I purchase gnostic summer runs in the alpine.

My feral late-August effort is not actually when I run an “only known time”; these dead-of-winter runs, when I’d rather be eating my eighth pancake, are the runs during which I earn my ability to perform unfettered on dry alpine single-track. Ha! my eyeballs actually froze open this year when I forgot to wear goggles on a windy run! As much as I work hard this season, often against the cues of immediate pleasure, there is beauty in the northern white.

My neighborhood cougar likes to walk behind doe and I like to run behind them both - keeping at least five minutes’ distance between us, lest we meet and become confused about who was stalking whom. Bobcat’s dark rump disappearing in the margins of unkempt pine forest calls me to presence on a snowy run, re-centering in my body. I’ve learned that eagle and raven have a flirtatious relationship in winter, the season during which they share carrion. I’ve watched a golden eagle crumple into the form of a loose paper bag on the wind only to right himself again mere feet above the ice-churning Chewuch river. Moose, pressured out of the highlands in search of more willow to snip, leaves her massive prints suspended in deep snow but, dammit.....never shows her horsey face.

Along these densely tamped down troughs within this valley - the only thin ribbons on which to make our way - we often meet and regard one another with surprise in the forest.

Next Photo: David Moskowitz