we seem mysteriously unable to discern the proper emotions when approached with the reality of a winter's night on the frontier. for there is fear, deep fear; the openly desolate is cold. the juniper knows, somewhere inside of its frontier DNA, that its destiny is a mere two feet, so it crowds in numbers, in disproportionately concentrated distribution, across the landscape, but is dwarfed so that you can still see the awful curve of the earth above its human-less edges.

the mountains loom. the darkness gathers with the ice. fear is proper. and it drives me to a joyously desperate hurrah; that here, fear is the beginning of understanding. so i shout out loud, hoping desperately that my sounds may extend beyond the borders of this wheeled metal and glass. the fear is what gives me the joy. the contrast is like that of the moon with the mountains; in the bitterness of the winter, it is only the illuminated snow on the mountains that gives me light to still distinguish mountain from sky, tree from plain, road from earth.