Morning arrives slowly in the valley. The sky is a band of peach melting into rose, and below it the haze lies over the cottonwoods. Every blade in the meadow wears a coat of frost, and the grass has turned the deep red of embers.
A narrow path cuts through it, the kind of trail made not by design but by the patient repetition of passing feet. It curves out of the foreground, and beside it is a weathered fence carrying its line across the land, rail after rail, post after post, until the mist takes it.
