By james art 
It was a long, heavy winter in much of the United States, fancy if you hate to scrape ice from the windows of your car in the morning. But for people who love snow, like me, winter is a playground.
I went to my snowmobiles on a classic cold day, only 19 degrees Fahrenheit when I got to the path. The trees are frozen with snow.
I’m a package from head to toe, which means I’m warm. One thing I love in winter tourism is that the right boots and layers of clothes that you can really feel cozy and comfortable, even when exploring places like this.
Soon the path takes me along the edge of a rock where there are cascades of ice, some bright yellow, some glowing blue. Ice paws are like a sculpture.
I’m not alone here. Every half an hour or so a herd of chickens revolves around me. They look curious, some bold that they almost settle on my outstretched glove.
I’m on. There are spots of blue sky through the snow, big sun checks. It’s still cold. My breath freezes in my beard.
Snowmobiles over the ridge and go down to a valley that feels completely lonely and wild. The silence of the deep winter is broken only by the drumming of a woodpecker in the shed of the tree. Its echo sound makes the forest look even more dilapidated.
Not long after, I push beyond the place where someone else has gone from the last heavy snowfall. This means that I am forced to pierce a path, to walk through the snow that is up to my knees, and sometimes to my waist.
Finally, I reach the edge of a frozen lake called a wolf pond. There is still flowing water here, a small river flowing under the ice, breaking into places above Cherni Rocks.
My snowmobiles make a different kind of sound on lake ice, a sharp crunch that disrupts silence.
The large mountains of the high -peak desert rise to the horizon, the glacial and the whites, the sky smoked by clouds.
As I stop resting and drinking black coffee from my thermos, the snow starts to fall again, large flakes bright against the February forest.
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