All of a sudden it just happens. You’re going along, head down, making it through February, beginning to wonder why you live in this climate, wondering how many more days you can take of this dull, grey, monotone world of eggshell white snow, charcoal tree trunks, bare dark brown alder branches, short shadowy days and long black nights.

Then it happens. Overnight the winter high pressure arrives with a searing white sun hanging in a sparkling blue sky, shattering the dullness, throwing a brilliant spotlight on gyrating frost crystals doing their whirligig dance in space.

Now you understand why you live here. Sometimes the details cloud the vision, the trees really do get in the way of seeing the forest. Then you climb up onto a ridge, open up the vista, crack the ceiling you have been under and see things anew.

That is what the sun does, it cracks open the mudge of fog and cloud, bringing the larger scene into perspective, reattaching the mind, the spirit and the body to the exotic wilderness that is the Chilcotin Ark.