The ground had glittered with frost when we started hunting; now, the shadows were beginning to lengthen, and not only was my gamebag still empty, my barrels weren’t even dirty. We—meaning my English cocker spaniel, Rumor, and I—had moved exactly one woodcock all day, a bird whose twittering rise I heard distinctly but whose pear-plump form I was unable to “find,” visually, through the gray, thickly massed ranks of popple.

I watch the season's first snowfall roll over Rocky Mountain National Park as I make my way down U.S. 36 into Estes Park. I’m in awe of the white tundra that sweeps across the jagged mountain peaks and clashes with bright yellow aspens still covering the landscape. Between breaks in the fast-moving clouds, intermittent bursts of morning sunshine illuminate the face of Longs Peak and The Mummy Range.