It’s the motion that’s noticed.  Deep in the winter twilight, a fleeting peripheral view, it is the motion:  a quick blur of gray-brown against the white of the snow.  Gray fox, black-tailed jackrabbit, or something else?  No matter, whatever it is is gone and the walk is about the woods anyway.

Cognizance of time passing comes a little late today.  Here at year’s end, the winter solstice upon the land, it’s now 5:10.  Sunset is 5 minutes away, what the astronomers refer to as “civil twilight” will be 20 minutes after that. It’s a walk of about two-and-a-half miles and the balmy 40º of an hour ago has faded to a memory, the temperature now at the point of frost and headed down.

Driving in today was possible, it’s always an option. But it’s not a preferred one at this time of the year.  The Plateau is exquisite under its blanket of snow, the green of the forest providing counterpoint.  The roads, made passable by the generous application of volcanic cinder (of which there is an abundance), are dark, dirty, messy scars upon it.  Pass.

At the edge of town the forest looms.  The first walk through these woods required a compass, the old, trusted friend providing a bearing home. The compass isn’t needed anymore, the forest has given up a great many of its secrets; however, it’s wise not to tarry as the frost will increase as twilight deepens into the winter night (there will be 25º of frost before morning arrives). The forest beckons…

Pinus ponderosa:  Mr. Douglas’ “ponderous” (“heavy”, “bulky”) pine tree.  The West’s juniper/pinon pine woodland is the preferred ecosystem, but the Ponderosa Pine the favored tree.  The Ponderosa Pine forest may lack the cachet of the great Douglas Fir forests of the Northwest Pacific littoral or the foggy Redwood rainforest of coastal California, but it is the forest of the West.  Mr. Douglas encountered the tree for the first time in 1826 on the volcanic plateau of eastern Washington (Is there any ground that that man did not cover in northwestern North America?…).  When young the bark is a less-than-attractive gray-black color, giving rise to one of the tree’s several names:  Blackjack Pine. When mature the tree’s bark takes on a cinnamon color that is as lovely as it is distinctive.  There’s more.   The young tree smells “piney”, like other pine trees, but the mature tree is something else again.  Many think it smells of butterscotch.  Still others describe it as cookies coming out of the oven.  Vanilla.  It’s almost always vanilla… To walk through a stand of mature ponderosas on a warm afternoon with a light breeze is sublime.

It covers the west.  It can be found in northwestern Nebraska.  You can find it across the American Southwest.  It is all over the east side of the Sierra Nevada (trivia question:  what was the name of the Cartwright’s ranch outside Carson City?…).  You can find it at 52ºN in the Fraser River basin of British Columbia.

At the moment the walk is through the largest contiguous Ponderosa forest in North America, here on the southwest side of the Colorado Plateau.  There are a few lesser luminaries scattered around the forest.  The Gambel Oak is here, although in greater numbers to the south where the forest loses elevation as it spills over the edge of the Rim.  An occasional Rocky Mountain Juniper is also present (Juniperus scopulorum, not to be confused with Juniperus osteosperma, “Utah Juniper”, the common Southwest juniper of the juniper/pinon pine woodland). Another favorite, Populus tremuloides, the “Quaking Aspen” is close by, a few miles north and about 1000’ higher on the mountainside. However, right here, the walk winds through the KIngs of the Forest…a mature stand of ponderosas.The post-sunset evenglow has vanished, the stars explode across the night sky.  At this elevation, in this dry land, the night unfolds in a way that cannot be experienced in most places.  It is no accident that Mr. Lowell came here to turn his eye towards the heavens. The starlight is… hard…brittle…adamantine…  If anything, the light is cold, discomfiting, yet in the velvet night softly compelling. The sensation from gloved fingers is telling; it is getting colder, maybe somewhere in the range of 5-10º of frost.   It’s a new moon, so there is no navigational help there.  Fortunately the snow, only about 6” deep, is a soft powder and does not impede the walk across the undulating surface of the fossilized lava flows of the Plateau.  A moment’s pause… a known topography, a known place.  Avoiding a small drift in the bottom of the draw, walking up a gentle rise to the top of the flow, in the distance directly ahead…a light.