The air was thin and brittle, like paper.  It sliced through flesh, wrinkled with every breath, and crumpled under foot. It was as if nature had been wrapped in a thin layer of cellophane, restrained and crinkling with every movement.  It was a bitter and unforgiving landscape that stood naked and vulnerable. And although life…

  The leafless trees bore the sun’s rays in flickering bursts, like an old movie projector.  Each fleeting image accumulating, until the sun appeared whole before sinking behind the horizon.   The weather has been somewhat atypical and wholly unpredictable.  The biting cold recently displaced by more moderate temperatures and…