Sitting in a March snow, on pine needles, fine granular wet flakes sifting straight down, feels cold, damp, and I love it, leaning against a pine trunk, nothing moving except the falling flakes, a crow calls out across the mountain valley, hidden in a fog, the silence is important to me, the solitude has value to me, it connects me to who I am, who I have always been, it brings me that awareness that I am alive, breathing, at the end of life I don’t know if it will matter, but it matters to me now.