The high-desert moan of the wind has been omnipresent for the last week. The warm winds melted away the eight to ten inches of snow piled everywhere, other than in the most persistent shadows, still mounded with dirty ice. So the world, in the low slant of morning sun, was all the dusty taupe of Front Range winter. The trees were black lace against the grass and cold pale sky, and flocks of geese rose in deep V's heading, inevitably north. Their compasses already pointing toward a spring that still feels so far away. I was driving into the dispatch center. On the way I saw men in black suits, black cowboy hats, solid black boots, and long black dusters paler on the legs with the blowing dust and dirt. They were directing traffic for a funeral, and their worn, rugged faces were solemn, all stern comfort for those that turned into the parking lot of the funeral home. It was a gray as the landscape, a simple one-story building surrounded by blacktop and the brown gray dirt. I'...