It sings sweet, my winter.

We make it to Hanging Lake, mid-day. The air is cool but not wet and we start the hike in. It’s a steep one and we’re slipping with each step up the 1,020 feet in elevation along the trail that follows Dead Horse Creek.

I can’t shake the terrible Christmas jingle in my head as Matt walks about twenty yards ahead of me. We make it to the mecca; the opening of Hanging Lake. It is frozen, untouched. It is perfect.

We walk around the sides, making sure to stay on trail and honor the fragile ecosystem.

There, the wind whispered the season a welcome. The song hung, and remains.

As Lord Byron so eloquently put it:

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods,

there is rapture on the lonely shore,

there is society, where none intrudes,

by the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature the more.”

We are outfitted in the warmest jackets ever placed on our bodies. These are she & him Eddie Bauer Superior Down Parkas. Our cold Colorado bones are thankful.