The cattle get down to
the foothills and ground-inhabiting creatures make fast their
doors. It grows chill, blind clouds fumble in the canons; there
will be a roll of thunder, perhaps, or a flurry of rain, but mostly
the snow is born in the air with quietness and the sense of strong
white pinions softly stirred. It increases, is wet and clogging,
and makes a white night of midday.
There is seldom any wind with first snows, more often rain,
but later, when there is already a smooth foot or two over all the
slopes, the drifts begin. The late snows are fine and dry, mere
ice granules at the wind's will. Keen mornings after a storm they
are blown out in wreaths and banners from the high ridges sifting
into the canons.
Once in a year or so we have a "big snow." The cloud tents
are widened out to shut in the valley and an outlying range or two
and are drawn tight against the sun. Such a storm begins warm,
with a dry white mist that fills and fills between the ridges, and
the air is thick with formless groaning. Now for days you get no
hint of the neighboring ranges until the snows begin to lighten and
some shouldering peak lifts through a rent. Mornings after the
heavy snows are steely blue, two-edged with cold, divinely fresh
and still, and these are times to go up to the pine borders.
