I haven’t written much the past few weeks.

Not because life has been full. More because it hasn’t. Just not in ways that resolve into something clear enough to name. It’s been a stretch of in-between—one of those seasons that doesn’t announce itself but quietly takes over.

They call it a shoulder season—the slope below the peaks.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like a slope. It feels like a pause.

Ski season is over. Not officially, maybe, but practically. What’s left is thin, patchy, or soft in a way that reminds you more of what was than what is. Even the corn snow has come and gone. At the same time, the trails aren’t ready. Too wet. Too fragile. Ride them now and you leave your mark in the worst way—deep ruts that last longer than your impatience. I don’t want to be that guy.

We were the first vehicle at the trailhead that morning. Snow was falling, not sideways or dramatic, just steady and confident. South Fork Canyon sat in that narrow winter window where the temperature hovers just above indecision: cold enough for clean flakes, warm enough to make you question your wax.

Before leaving, I told my wife I was glad for my old jacket, twenty years my backcountry touring companion, and still perfect from the teens to forty degrees. It repels moisture without drama, breaks wind without stiffness, warms without weight. I know exactly how it performs. No questions asked.

But I was also wearing new boots, which eventually raised several questions.

I’ve read too much about sleep lately. And I’m working on it—which seems oxymoronic. Shouldn’t I just be mostly unaware for seven or eight hours? Like so many modern fixations, we assume that if we study something long enough, we can get a handle on it—even when it’s designed to elude conscious control.

Like many fads, sleep optimization promises mastery. And like many fads, it runs into something far older and far less impressed with our intentions. The unchanging evidence of biological rhythm has been all around us, always.

Like many of my days, I found my way onto a trail near dusk—my squirrel-chasing dog in tow. Somewhere between the trees and the fading light, it struck me that much of what I was seeing was already asleep. Dormant. Call it what you will. Nearly everything alive sleeps. Year-round. And perhaps even more so in winter.

In storytelling, a throughline is the line of force that carries a narrative forward. It’s the path a story naturally wants to take—the most direct route from premise to resolution. When it’s sound, everything else can hang from it. When it’s unexamined, the story still moves, but it moves by gravity rather than judgment.

Enduring paths are shaped, not followed.

In the natural world, there’s a closely related idea: the fall line.

It wasn’t that long ago that a new trail began to appear across a slope that had previously been accessed only by a steeper line. At first, it wasn’t really a trail at all—just deep horse and elk tracks pressed into late-spring mud once the frost finally let go. I noticed it immediately. Their instincts mirrored my own.

I’m not one to cut new trails willy-nilly, but something felt right about this one. Necessary, even. So I gathered rocks and branches and gently blocked off the old path—deeply rutted from years of runoff and spinning mountain-bike tires. It had done its job, but not well. And it wasn’t especially kind to the hillside it crossed.

The new line, I sensed, would do the job of a trail better. It wouldn’t turn into a rock-rolling chute every time it rained, thawed, or baked dry. It would shed water instead of concentrating it. It would endure.

Which, over time, it has.

The old route is now grown over—quietly restored to match the grasses and brush around it, as if it had never been there at all.