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.

We headed out expecting first tracks but were beaten — likely late the night before or just ahead of dawn — by a man I decided to call Earl and his dog of some unknown breed. Their tracks crossed the final stretch of road crisp and defined, but even as we studied them, fresh snow thickened, softening the edges and flattening the dark-white contrast that revealed contour in the muted morning light.

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.

The other day, I drove up the canyon to “check if it’s still there,” or so I told my daughter on the phone as I accelerated.

I didn’t have a question in mind as I drove. There’s always something waiting at home—unfinished work, loose worries—and lately there’s even the broader concern of what the winter hasn’t delivered up that way. But none of that explained the drive. It happened almost without forethought or consent.

“He does this daily,” my wife might say.

That possibility hadn’t crossed my mind until I reached the end of my favorite side canyon and turned around.

That turn was familiar. Too familiar.

I didn’t linger. I didn’t get out of the car. I simply pointed the hood back toward home and headed down-canyon, the way I have so many times before. And that’s when it surfaced—not as an accusation, just as a noticing.

I come here a lot.