I went in search of snow this weekend. It still is a wonder to me that the mountains are so close, holding any number of secrets cupped in their valleys. We found a groomed trail covered in snow and strolled for miles. Down the road a bit skiers peppered the hillsides, and all around us everything glittered, so brilliant I had to close my eyes. I'm not what anyone would mistake as outdoorsy, but even still I had been craving the peace to be found in those trees.
I think a lot about what all of those rocks and those trees have seen in all of these years, the time before people came and what has occurred after. All the scars we have left on them and the structures we have built to shore them up, whatever remains of the people that had passed through those vistas before me. More generally, I guess, I think a lot about the last line of that Larkin poem: "What will survive of us is love", and how we make that more visible than all of the scars.