The distant hum of an approach­ing vehicle cuts through the quiet of West­more, Vermont. It vibrates off the frozen mid­night air, air that is charged and heavy with soon-to-fall snow, air that holds more promise than the mess of metal and wire in front of me. I toss the instruc­tion manual onto my desk, happy for an excuse to stop reading. It is meant to be a camera. A “fool­proof” gift from my son that will record outdoor wildlife while I sleep. I leave the pieces where they are and head to the front door.

—

          When Liam Saba­ti­ni steps out of the Subaru, my first impres­sion is that he looks young—younger than twenty-nine. It’s mostly his frame, which is boyish and not quite fully grown, much shorter than his dad’s. His upper body is lost within a lumpy gray crew­neck that reads CORNELL across the front in scarlet block letters. An old-school college sweat­shirt, the kind you might save and pass to your kids.
          I walk toward him to help with his bags, taking careful steps to avoid the icy patches.
          “Liam, welcome. I’m Dr. Mark Burns.”
          “Hi, Dr. Burns,” he says. He has a deep, slow voice and a firm grip. “Thanks for waiting up, sorry about the delay.”
          I wave it off. “How was the drive?”
          “It was …” His hand rises to massage his jaw and cover a deep sigh, “long.”
          An under­state­ment. The drive from Hoboken, New Jersey took at least seven hours. I mapped the route before he left. Given the two empty coffee cups in his pas­sen­ger seat and the cir­cum­stances of his visit, I’m sure it felt longer.
          “And they aren’t big on street­lights up here? Or visible road signs?” He tries to say it casu­al­ly, in polite con­ver­sa­tion, but it comes across robotic and self-con­scious.
          “No, not quite.” I keep my own voice at a calm, well-prac­ticed level that says you’re doing great. There are hardly even stop signs in West­more. There’s no real need. The small town is dis­persed among acres of pro­tect­ed forest. It is calm, quiet, and pre­dictable. The perfect loca­tion for Oakbend Care, where I help ter­mi­nal­ly ill patients die com­fort­ably.
          “The town­ship keeps things as natural as they can,” I para­phrase.
          “Huh.”
          You can hear the silence out here, the way it sits on top of all the empty land. While it echoes, I look for sim­i­lar­i­ties between Liam and his father, John. None are imme­di­ate. From what I’ve gath­ered, the two are quite dif­fer­ent. John Saba­ti­ni, the wise-ass retired Brat­tle­boro cop, is asleep inside. He is here because of stage four lung cancer. He will die on Sunday.
          Liam looks towards the sky and sighs. His breath hangs there. Every­one has a dif­fer­ent idiom for it, the dying part. Pass peace­ful­ly. Enter their eternal rest. Go with God. John calls it his Cal­cu­lat­ed Croak. I prefer Die with Dignity. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to say goodbye on your own terms, before the hos­pi­tal-admit­ting com­pli­ca­tions, with the right prepa­ra­tions, while you’re still you. The nuances are many, but that’s the core of it.
          “Let’s head in and I’ll show you where you’re staying,” I say, and lead Liam towards the door. “There’s a fire inside.”

          He observes the entry­way with a touch of tired sur­prise. Although tech­ni­cal­ly a medical facil­i­ty, Oakbend Care holds no resem­blance to a hos­pi­tal. It is cabin-like, with high ceil­ings, a set of leather couches, and framed maps of nearby ski moun­tains on the walls. There is no space for beeping or flatlin­ing here. There is no rum­bling of cart wheels, running of foot­steps, frantic pierc­ing of needles, defib­ril­la­tor shocks, suction tools, unan­tic­i­pat­ed yells. There is no “keep them out of here,” “call a crash cart,” “ready, clear,” “the treat­ment isn’t working,” or “I’m sorry, there was nothing else we could do.” Instead, there is a mutu­al­ly agreed upon date. For some, a last prayer, or med­i­ta­tion, or reading. Then, a care­ful­ly admin­is­tered final drink, taken when ready.
          “Dif­fer­ent than you expect­ed?” I ask.
          “Yeah, it’s … I guess it looks like some of the pic­tures on the website?” He scratch­es his head, which is full of the thick brown hair his dad has in old photos. “You live here too, right?”
          “In the small guest house out back.”
          “Full time?”
          “For the past three years.”
          “Does anyone else?”
          “Not full time, no.”
          For a moment I let Liam try and fill in my story, try to figure out how a sixty-some­thing-year-old New York City oncol­o­gist ended up here, alone, in the middle of nowhere.
          “A couple of nurses rotate in during the day. Other than that, it’s just me and the current patient or family.”
          Liam’s eyes veer to my hands. Most people look for a ring. They assume a “mourn­ing widower” sce­nario. When I mention Laurie, my ex-wife, they’re relieved to learn that it was just divorce.
          “I have a son, close to your age, actu­al­ly, but he’s based out in San Fran­cis­co.”
          The answer ebbs Liam’s curios­i­ty slight­ly. People feel better when they know I have a life outside of helping people die. I could give him more, about the history of Oakbend, about the history of Vermont’s Act 39 Medical Aid in Dying laws. I could tell him that I don’t hate my ex-wife, that we remained some­what close, actu­al­ly, if that makes him more com­fort­able. Or that I didn’t start this place alone, that I opened it with my friend, Dr. Zachary Wood, back when his own “ter­mi­nal” still felt like a sug­ges­tion. But it’s cold, and it’s late, and this visit isn’t about me.
          “Do you need any­thing?” I ask. “Dinner, water? Let’s sit for a second, if you don’t mind.” Liam nods in sub­con­scious rep­e­ti­tion.
          “Water, please, would be great.”
          I leave him and walk towards the kitchen. The tap stream runs cold and steady into the glass. That’s how things are meant to be in West­more, cold and steady, but my hand shakes slight­ly as the water nears the top. I’ve never liked the initial meeting of the family, and this intro­duc­tion feels par­tic­u­lar­ly pater­nal. Greet­ing the family was Wood’s spe­cial­ty. He was the guy that got people talking. New York patients, their rel­a­tives, little kids, store clerks, my son, Joey. People opened up to him. I still can’t get Joey talking the way Wood could. Not about his week­ends, or the intri­ca­cies of his wife’s preg­nan­cy. Not about the East Coast job offer he’s sitting on, the one that would bring him back home. These details are trans­mit­ted only through Laurie. I press down on the tap handle and the water cuts off.

          Liam sits upright on the couch with his eyes fixed on the dimin­ish­ing pile of red embers. His hands are occu­pied, they trade tight squeezes from palm to palm, so I place the water on the table between us.
          “I’ll go over a couple things quickly.”
          His body stays still except for the hands, and I can’t tell if he’s heard me. When he opens his mouth, it takes a second for the right words to come out.
          “This place feels … really normal? For a place people come to die, I mean.” He turns to meet my gaze, his eye­brows fur­rowed in con­cen­tra­tion. Most family members have visited Oakbend before the Passing Day, but for Liam, this is his first time. His atten­dance wasn’t in the orig­i­nal plan. “I assume that’s the point?” He picks up the water glass and holds it on his knee, rubbing his thumb up and down the side in a nervous tick.
          John didn’t want any close family to see him at the end—especially his only son, with whom he’d spent the past three months mending a deeply frac­tured rela­tion­ship. I don’t like the idea of him plug­ging this address into a GPS, John rea­soned with me. Of him knowing how to get back here.
          It could be that, maybe, but my guess is more likely the fear that when asked to be there, Liam might still say no.
          “It’s a com­fort­able place to be,” I confirm.
          It was Liam who changed John’s mind about doing it alone. He per­son­al­ly request­ed to join. As John told me the change of plans, it was one of the few moments, in all of this, when he strug­gled to get the words out.
          “The Passing Day is still planned for Sunday,” I say.
          Feb­ru­ary eigh­teenth. John and Liam chose the date togeth­er for a few reasons. Logis­ti­cal­ly, it allowed Liam to drive up from New Jersey after work on Friday. No need for him to waste any vaca­tion on my account, John told me with a wheezy laugh.
          “I’m not sure how much he’s shared with you, but tomor­row morning we’ll all meet and go through some specifics.”
          The eigh­teenth also gave John the right number of days to final­ize his will and sift through his life­time of belong­ings. It is a careful balance, the timing. It must be early enough that the patient is still of sound mind when they make the deci­sion to die, a cal­cu­lat­ed pre­dic­tion that ensures the ter­mi­nal illness hasn’t yet infil­trat­ed their clarity of thought. John spent the past three days sorting through boxes of old doc­u­ments. Earlier today he gave me a thick folder of chrono­log­i­cal news­pa­per clip­pings, funny police reports, and black and white photos to give Liam once it was all over. His version of a memoir.
          “The rest of the day will be just you two. He doesn’t have an appetite, but his energy levels are sur­pris­ing­ly good, con­sid­er­ing.” Liam nods and keeps pur­pose­ful eye contact.
          Lastly, and perhaps the most impor­tant reason they chose the eigh­teenth, was that one plus eight equals nine. Joe DiMag­gio, number nine, one of the great­est of all time. It’s sur­pris­ing what com­forts people, espe­cial­ly in the end.
          “How are you feeling?” I ask, catch­ing us both slight­ly off guard.
          “Fine—or, weird? I guess?” Liam places the water glass, still full, back on the table. “Kind of nervous. This doesn’t feel real at all, you know? More like I’m just vis­it­ing him, since it’s been a while.” His shoul­ders relax a bit as he fills the silence. I wait a moment. Waiting a moment is usually best. It’s the part I’m good at, and what made me and Wood a great team.
          “This is stupid,” he con­tin­ues, “but when I stopped home after work, before the drive, there was this moment of fig­ur­ing out what to pack. What do you wear to go watch your dad die?”
          He looks down at his sweat­shirt, then back up with a ten­ta­tive smile. It reveals a closer resem­blance to John, the way his eyes soften and his cheeks bubble up.
          “He gave me this over a decade ago, when I left to start college there, and all I thought about in the car ride here was how infor­mal it is for a guy that spent his whole life in uniform.”
          He leans back against the worn leather. I want to offer him a blanket, or the water, again, or a hand on the shoul­der, but I stay where I am. “You wouldn’t have been the first person to ask me what to pack.”
          We walk down the long, car­pet­ed hallway to the guest suite, where the door opens with a shrill squeak. There isn’t much to explain. A simple bed stacked with blan­kets, an old dresser, a bare-bones kitch­enette. The high­light is a loveseat by the window. Liam wouldn’t be able to see it now, but in the daytime, on a clearer day, it offers spec­tac­u­lar views of the ridged Vermont moun­tains.
          We agree on ten a.m. tomor­row to sit with John and talk through the final details. “One more ques­tion, actu­al­ly,” Liam says, as I turn to leave. He scratch­es his head and keeps his hand there. “Will I have to be in the room with him when it all happens? Or do most people do it pri­vate­ly?”
          It’s a common ques­tion.
          “That’s up to you and John. People go both ways. Depends on the person, their wishes, the family.”
          “It feels like I should be there with him, but—” An exhale. A hand through the hair, again. “I know I asked to be here—want to be here. But we aren’t exactly …” He search­es for the right word and settles on “close.” I try and arrange my face in a way that shows I under­stand, that Liam doesn’t have to explain it if he doesn’t want to, that John already shared with me hints of an earlier life riddled with mis­takes, regret, alco­holism, the works.
          “I just don’t know if I want to watch it.”
          “You don’t have to decide tonight.”
          Liam nods a few times, then walks over and extends his arm. “Thank you, Dr. Burns.” He shakes my hand, again, with purpose. I see the resem­blance a second time, like I did with the smile. There is some John in there. The way his jaw clench­es and his eyes slight­ly squint. The air of respect that comes with each hand­shake.
          I close the door behind me and leave Liam alone for what I know, per­son­al­ly, will be a dif­fi­cult night.

—

          “What a day to be alive!” John says, with a wink, leading Liam into my office five minutes before our sched­uled meeting.
          “Jesus, Dad.”
          John has worked that phrase into a con­ver­sa­tion every day of his two-week stay. He leans heavy into humor and the maximum dose of painkillers in the final weeks. It’s nice, the laughs, a part of his per­son­al brand I know I’ll miss.
          “Looks like they were right about the snow, huh?” John nods towards the window. His voice is grav­el­ly and thin, layered with the usual pos­i­tiv­i­ty and a fresh hint of nerves. There’s a new audi­ence member now. “Good thing it didn’t come down last night.”
          He looks com­fort­able, slumped back in the cush­ioned loveseat, ready to talk through the pre-Passing Day details of atten­dance and timing and ashes. Liam, though, finally looks his age, the lack of sleep sits fixed beneath his eyes.
          “Yeah,” Liam says. “Good thing.” I follow their col­lec­tive gaze behind me, through the window, where flakes stream down like rain. The white­ness of it casts a filter across their faces and bright­ens the office. It’s the most formal room of the house, a place that makes it clear there is busi­ness to be done and deci­sions to be made. “Eva said you had a nice morning togeth­er,” I lie.
          Eva, the nurse, didn’t mention any­thing. I watched them through the window. They took a slow labo­ri­ous lap around the prop­er­ty perime­ter, bundled in coats and scarves, Liam holding John’s oxygen tank. I tried to see if their lips were moving, curious if they had as much to say in person as they did over the phone. The snow made it too hard to tell.
          “Yes, yes, good to get some fresh air togeth­er. Quite the dra­mat­ic frozen sendoff for me, though,” John says, and I hope he means the weather.
          I keep us on track: atten­dance.
          “For tomor­row, John, it will be just the two of us in the room when you pass.”
          “Yessir,” John responds. He informed me of his deci­sion this morning. No dis­cus­sion with his son required, his one final act of service. Liam looks relieved, his steam­ing mug hov­er­ing in midair between his lap and mouth.
          “I’ll come to your room around seven a.m.,” I con­tin­ue. Timing. “Liam, you’ll have the chance to go in before then for good­byes. There’s no rush, you can take as long as you need.”
          Liam takes a sip and winces as the burning liquid runs down his throat. There is tension in the room that is some­what expect­ed. The John I know— funny, honest, at peace—is a dif­fer­ent John than the one Liam grew up with. I con­sid­er, for a second, if Liam feels like he’s saying goodbye to a stranger.
          “The process looks dif­fer­ent for every­one, but it will be pain­less, as you know, and takes only about thirty minutes to an hour once you drink the solu­tion.”
          “I’ve got a high tol­er­ance, doc, so plan for an hour before you throw me in the box.”
          “Dad.” Liam cuts, his voice sharp. “What’s with the joking?”
          The room is still and fragile. John lets out a shallow sigh.
          “Liam,” he says. “We’ve got to get through it somehow.”
          “Right, so let’s do that. Let’s get through it.” Liam ges­tures towards me. “There just isn’t a lot of time here, is all,” he adds, quieter.
          I feel the olive branch between them splin­ter with each silent second. My pri­or­i­ty is the patient, always. Give them enough infor­ma­tion, make sure they are com­fort­able, protect their last wishes, do every­thing I can to help them die with dignity. For a moment, though, I think about what this looks like to Liam. This new version of his dad answer­ing my ques­tions like we’re old friends. A sense of humor he’s never seen before, the anger he remem­bered gone. Of course, none of this would make sense to him.
          John nods toward the camera still sitting on the corner of my desk. “What’s with the cords, doc?”
          “Ah.” I pick it up, a dis­trac­tion. “A Christ­mas gift from my son. Night camera. ‘Fool­proof,’ appar­ent­ly,” I say to John in exchange for a laugh. “It’s sup­posed to acquaint me with the local noc­tur­nal wildlife.”
          “Well Liam can prob­a­bly help you, right?” John looks towards Liam, who is blush­ing slight­ly from his out­burst. “He’s good at that type of stuff. Works in the tech biz.”
          Liam opens his mouth, to correct him, prob­a­bly, about his role at “the tech biz” being that of the in-house accoun­tant, but he closes his lips and reaches for the camera instead. He fiddles with the hard­ware and plays with the buttons while I move on to the final order of busi­ness.
          Ashes. I inform Liam he won’t have to worry about them, that they will be saved here so someone can pick them up, or we can arrange for them to be shipped. It’s effi­cient, the way we talk about it. Like we’re dis­cussing the fire­place remains from last night. It seems to be how Liam and John speak most com­fort­ably.
          “Have you thought about where you’d like them spread, John?”
          Liam turns the lens and studies the model details.
          “Not yet, but I told Liam about the memo­r­i­al Mikey is plan­ning.”
          Mikey is John’s best friend, the head of the Brat­tle­boro Police Depart­ment. He dropped off John at Oakbend but didn’t come inside.
          “It’ll be at the station on March fourth—my birth­day,” he con­tin­ues, the room at peace again. “One last party.”
          “Great, I’ll get a keg,” Liam says sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.
          John’s eyes light up, moved by the vision of Liam in a room full of people, good people, who have reason to cel­e­brate him.
          “Now look who’s joking, eh? Good. And tell your mom not to feel bad, she doesn’t have to come—”
          “She’d co—”
          “—and make sure to invite Cousin Ricky or he’ll kill me.”
          “Da—”
          “You know what, I’ve got an idea, when Ricky gets drunk enough, tell him he can throw my ashes around as con­fet­ti.” He throws a fake hand of it in the air, bless­ing us all with the visual. “That’s how we can spread ’em.”
          The invis­i­ble ash settles around us. Liam chokes slight­ly on a sip of coffee. John starts in on another one of his wheezy giggles. I tilt my face down to hide a smile.
          Even­tu­al­ly, Liam does laugh. Once he starts, he can’t stop. The two of them feed off each other. They laugh so hard their faces turn red and tears squeeze out of their eyes, John with his head thrown back­wards, prac­ti­cal­ly choking, Liam bent forward with his hand cov­er­ing his face. They keep sneak­ing glances at me, like kids in trouble, the knowl­edge they shouldn’t be laugh­ing like gaso­line on a fire.
          It ends when John’s body is racked with a cough­ing fit that pulls the life from his eyes. Liam puts the camera on the desk and stands to offer help. He hands him the portable oxygen, his hands on John’s shoul­der and forearm, pro­tec­tive­ly, until the hacks slow to a stop. As they catch their breath, I’m struck by how much older Liam looks when arched over his dad’s frail frame. I avert my gaze. The moment is private, a signal that we’re done here.
          On their way out, Liam turns and points to the camera. “I think you actu­al­ly had it set up right,” he says. “It might have some­thing to do with the porch lights you leave on. This version only works when it’s fully dark.”

—

          “What a morning to be alive, Mark,” John says, his eyes rimmed red, a soft smile on his lips.
          And so, we begin.
          A glass of water. A bed with pillows. Lots of them, with soft outer cases that are gentle against his fragile skin. Pro­to­col. Simple instruc­tions: the pre­scrip­tion must be ingest­ed in its entire­ty. “Music?” “No, thank you.” Silence. Empty space. A police badge enclosed in his palm. Gold and green. Liam’s fresh fin­ger­prints on the door­knob, his goodbye already com­plete. Snow falling through the window, still.
          The solu­tion. Next to the water. “There when you’re ready.” Final thoughts. Mem­o­ries, maybe? Prayers? Replays? Joe DiMaggio’s fifty-sixth game of con­sec­u­tive hits? Mikey. Liam. Fathers and sons.
          Even­tu­al­ly, the glass. Not the water one. Heavy in frail hands. Tired Hands. Wrin­kled hands. Hands with many lives. A couple re-dos.
          Even­tu­al­ly, a grimace. “Dis­gust­ing,” he says, the liquid fresh on his lips. Greedy, gra­cious gulps. Bitter after­taste. Med­i­c­i­nal. Not pleas­ant, so I’ve heard. “Thank you.” Set­tling in. Leaning back. Eyelids closed.
          Inhale, exhale.
          Time, slow moving.
          Inhale, exhale.
          Time, ephemer­al.
          Inhale, exhale.
          Inhale, exhale.

          At 7:23 a.m. on Sunday, Feb­ru­ary 18th, there is a split second too long of silence. A whis­pered puff of air without the next cor­re­spond­ing inhale, like the final flake of a heavy snow­fall, landing softly some­where, holding the invis­i­ble weight that it is the last of its kind, the end of some­thing brief and complex and beautiful.

—

          I breathe in and out. Rhyth­mic puffs of air crys­tal­lize in front of me when they meet the cold. The snow kept falling after Liam left, drop­ping three more inches of hard-packed powder on Oakbend’s nearby trail. Each step demands a pur­pose­ful punc­ture of the hard­ened top layer, a series of sharp cracks that cut through the early morning quiet. It makes the short hike feel impos­si­ble. My pace is slow and arduous, but tra­di­tion is tra­di­tion.
          John Saba­ti­ni was a hard one. Med­ical­ly, his expe­ri­ence wasn’t unique. Liam, though, was unex­pect­ed. After a gra­cious “thank you,” he left imme­di­ate­ly, in that sweat­shirt he arrived in. When he got home seven hours later it would look like nothing had changed. That can be the hardest part. Monday’s alarm still goes off, the clock on the wall keeps ticking, the kitchen faucet still has a leaky drip. When Wood finally passed, I had his family here to take care of, I had people to help and keep me busy. I worry about what Liam will do.
          The wind whis­tles and I inhale Westmore’s sig­na­ture scent: damp wood, freshly frozen ice, clean snow. The trees creak them­selves awake around me, stretch­ing their own limbs and shim­my­ing off loose dust­ings of powder that glitter as they fall. When I first started Oakbend Care, the change of scenery and fresh moun­tain air had smacked me awake like a shot of epi­neph­rine. It was so dif­fer­ent from the stuffy con­gest­ed side­walks of the New York hos­pi­tal, the win­dow­less rooms on our Emer­gency Unit. Usually, this trail reminds me of that begin­ning, that sense of purpose. It feels labored today.
          Joey was with me the first time we dis­cov­ered this path, when we cleared the excess brush and snapped the branch­es in our way. He’d flown from Cal­i­for­nia to help me move, had been equally impressed with the place and with my “old man” energy levels.
          You walk like you’re on a time trial.
          Save some energy, Dad, this house of yours needs more work than you think.
          A bird calls some­where and I stop to look for it. Above me, the spindly arms of beech trees fight for space, over­lap­ping each other. Against the deep blue of the slowly bright­en­ing sky, it looks like they’re glowing.

          I waited until Joey was in New York, on a work trip, to share the news about Oakbend. It was three and a half years ago. We talked over morning coffee at a diner outside the hos­pi­tal, where the steam from our thick-handled mugs swirled in the empty space between us.
          So, you’re going to help people die. Why haven’t I heard of this Act 39 before? he’d asked.
          It’s new for Vermont, just became legal there.
          And it’s your idea, but Wood is helping? Does mom know you’re moving yet?
          The scratch of spat­u­las on grid­dles and the hollow clunk of ceramic plates filled the gaps of my insuf­fi­cient answers. There is no pro­to­col for telling your newly divorced but long-time-gone wife that you are moving to rural Vermont, that you bought a dete­ri­o­rat­ing fixer-upper you will trans­form into an end-of-life Medical Aid in Dying facil­i­ty, that the first patient, the root of this all, is someone you both know. Someone Joey knows. Someone who is like family. Someone who is Wood. Even­tu­al­ly, I chose email. It’s how we’d polite­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed on divorce logis­tics for months. As trans­ac­tion­al as a pre­scrip­tion. We saved text mes­sages for sparser, more metaphor­i­cal correspondence—when I said things like, Noticed Angelina’s on York is closing in case you want to stop by, which meant, We had a good thing once and what a shame it couldn’t be resus­ci­tat­ed. I’m sorry for that. Did you hes­i­tate at all before signing the Papers?
          I answered Joey’s ques­tions on Act 39. He seemed more con­cerned about the legal­i­ty of it all than with my actual uproot­ing. When we left the diner, he still wasn’t con­vinced. Two weeks later he texted me a link to a new model of ergonom­ic snow­shoes. A month later, when I used the word “ter­mi­nal” in an update on Wood, he stopped asking ques­tions and started asking if I needed help. Joey stayed for a full week the summer I moved in. The most time we’d spent just the two of us, with silence I wished I was better at filling. He’s visited only once since. When Wood died. Oth­er­wise, the trip is too far.
          The bird calls again, farther away this time, my signal to keep walking. I lean forward and push against the final incline, feel my sturdy boots make contact with the padded earth. I move quicker, still think­ing of Joey. Think­ing of the camera I need to hang up. Think­ing about the photos it will take that I can share with him. Think­ing of his East Coast job offer. Think­ing of why he hasn’t told me about it yet, if it’s because he’s not sure he’ll take it, or because he’s not sure he wants to be back here, near his dad, who he thought would be done griev­ing by now, back from his stint alone in Vermont, but is still throw­ing himself so deeply into helping patients die that he’s for­got­ten to make time for anyone else. Beads of sweat cling to my bottom thermal layer and my throat burns with the exer­tion in the cold. I will hang the camera after the hike. I will see if it makes a dif­fer­ence when the lights are fully off for the night.
          Head down, steady breaths, a hand on a tree when I need it. Then, a pocket of sun­light that signals I’ve arrived. I let out a deep exhale. This trail is a special occa­sion hike for good reason. Short, steep, and a little less than a mile in length, it cul­mi­nates at a small clear­ing with an extra­or­di­nary view of Vermont’s Green Moun­tains, now draped in white. The clear­ing faces the sunrise head on, and on cloud­less morn­ings it offers the type of breath­tak­ing spec­ta­cle that catches in your chest. So private and del­i­cate you must hold your breath to keep from dis­turb­ing the uni­verse. Today, the orange sun rises clear and bright in apology for the pre­vi­ous days of gray.