More than most things, I can remember sitting on a rock in a narrow slot canyon in the middle of winter.

I’d come up from Section 16, a loop of a trail in the foothills of Pike’s Peak, and cut off trail through Juniper and bare scrub. Then across a narrow steel grate brdge over what I’d always assumed to be a concrete sluice use to route water from snow melt, then trespassing as I crossed the cog railway that ran to the summit. I’d been there before, but never in winter.

The lower trail was pocked with bits of snow that had melted and refrozen into crucnhy ice, but after I’d crossed the railway there was enough snow that I had switched to snowshoes. These betweens, the short and narrow spaces between hills and lesser-known peaks were knee-deep with snow. After an hour I’d found myself climbing a slope towards where two hills meet, when it unexpectedly flattened out into an aspen copse, bare save for the layer of powder balanced on the branches. I made my way to the center and cleared off a rock and sat down.

It was dead still. Quiet in a way I’d never heard, if that’s a thing which makes sense to say?

And the little love I had

For all the friends I know

And the little time we got to share was worth it

After all

The things we remember versus the things we think we will. Vacations long forgotten, that mean thing a kid said to you in fourth grade, the smell of a particular fabric softener. The things we share with ourselves and with others which stick, but were never something we chose. I think about that time in the clearing nearly every week and I still can’t say exactly why.