On the way to Camel's Hump, the Winooski River runs strong and fast. This is a season of water, this time between the dropping of leaves and the full turn to snow. When rain comes the roots are inert as stone, with no chlorophyll bring sugars into the sap, no tiny stomata pores to exhale oxygen and water both and work the xylem vacuum. The rain flows through and over the half-frozen ground, pours itself into rivulets and streams, down waterfalls that turn to sheets of ice at night, pours down the muddy and treacherous trails, down the tire-tracks in the dirt road, pours right through each crevice in the mountain itself and into the river and into the lake.

Rain is rain; mountain is mountain; rock is rock; river is river. Right?

The river runs silver and black. The sunlight speaks winter; the rushes and reeds are grey and tawn. This feels like winter to me. Only the larches show color now, their yellow needles spraying with every wind. Tiny ridges of snow line the bare branches of birches, maples, willows, oaks. I cannot tell them apart. The sunlight has melted the edges of the snow and lights each liquid curve until the trail is a blaze of jewels. We stop and breathe and breathe until the cold seeps in.