I expected this.

November's new Moon delivered the first major snowfall of the season along with a powerful late-autumn variant of the Gray in the form of snow fog enveloping the mountains and prematurely exciting every single ski bum within a 200-mile radius.

What startled me was not the contrast of the remaining brightly colored vegetation being slowly executed by winter, but a suddenly unconcealed wasp nest sporting a heavy snow cap that managed to hold onto a bare-naked aspen.

That, and a lone mosquito that somehow survived the Blitzkrieg of wind and ice pellets and followed me for a dozen feet sensing nourishment.

The proletarian mud on my boots mixed in with the nobility of freshly fallen snow: Octobrists and Decembrists embedded into a single sole pattern.

I just hoped that my camera battery lasts in the cold.