Winter encroaches

It's late October now, and Bozeman's Indian summer has finally passed. First frost appeared last week, the temperature hasn't broken seventy for a while and snow is forecast any day. It's all I hear people talking about. Most are not excited for this. I am.

I like winter and the snow and the long nights and the stillness imposed by the cold. I missed it in Kenya when our Christmas was very much green.

I have not, however, very often enjoyed the run up to the season. In Baudette it was rainy and wet, and the only color the leaves turned were brown. Fall was a season to muddle through before winter's wonder. Spokane was better. There was a clear fall and crispness in the air. For a couple of months it was jacket weather and the leaves went gold and orange and purple and all the rest. It was a season I could actually look forward to.

Bozeman's fall tends more toward Baudette's, but it may boast the best indicator of the coming season yet as the snow falls first on the mountains, capping them in white. The clouds pass them, and I know what will soon be coming here. It is quite excellent.