Day 22: On the Bald

The colorful town is down below

Sitting still with smoke creeping from its metal stacks

Snow machines roar and welcome the season

With ice-covered birch branches that crinkle like tissue paper

Clinging to the cold sky like fingers made of snow

While dog barks echo through the empty air

Of the Yukon River and all its sloughs

Stretch throughout the land like the veins of Earth

Frozen and covered in the whites of winter

Wind skims across my nose, the world rockets

Through the universe at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour

Without moving a muscle

Climb to the snowy patch that opens to the sky

Where mountain chains stretch across the horizon

Holding the memories of the world, wrapped up in their warm core