New Year's Eve morning

Winter has settled down to stay for a while at the High Mountain Lodge. It reminds me of the Christina Rossetti poem, In the bleak midwinter: "Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow." Soon even the tallest of the dead grasses down in the meadow will be under the snow.

There is, however, little that is bleak about a Colorado high-country winter. Even as I write this on the last day of the year, the sun is shining through the window of the office and dazzling me to the point I can barely see the computer screen. If the clouds, which mercifully acted as a blanket and kept the temperature above zero last night, abate as I expect them to do, the dry, cold air will mean that the sky will be so dark blue this afternoon that it will almost be purple.

Of course, there is a flurry of activity, what with the holidays and the New Year's celebrations. But even that bustle can't completely erode the serenity of the outdoors: