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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}P1000768_1.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 188px;" /></p>
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	We&rsquo;ve had a wonderful fall, long stretches of blue skies and bright sun casually interrupted by several days of steady rain.&nbsp; The kind of weather you can understand, a healthy give and take; 4 or 5 days of sun for 2 or 3 days of rain, a fair trade.</p>
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	I have to be honest though; I have secretly wanted snow for weeks. It&rsquo;s not that late fall is boring.&nbsp; By all means it is fantastic.&nbsp; There is a clarity and depth that emerges from the forest, which is almost unimaginable during the summer months.&nbsp; Those who walk the woods are gifted with blasts of color from small tooth aspens, white oaks, and beeches that thankfully (<em>and stubbornly</em>) insist of retaining their leaves until the last moment.&nbsp;</p>
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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}P1000758_1.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 188px;" /></p>
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	Yet this subtle beauty is seldom enough to prevent me from eagerly anticipating the first sandal-ending snow. That is because I love Northern Michigan winters, they are beautiful, practically indescribably so.&nbsp; Gobs of white fluffy snow drape from the conifers.&nbsp; Vertical bands of brown and grey trunks divvy up the endless expanses of white.&nbsp; Hiking boots are traded for snowshoes; bikes for skis.&nbsp; And don&rsquo;t even get me started on winter trout fishing on the Manistee and Au Sable rivers.&nbsp; Yep, winter is a beautiful time of year.</p>
<p>
	It&rsquo;s also 7 months long.&nbsp; That means 7 months of daily shoveling, dressing in layers, stomping boots at the door, grey skies, and automobile eating salted roads (it helps to remember all of this when you are praying for snow in October&hellip;)</p>
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	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}P1000769_1.jpg" style="width: 250px; height: 188px;" /></p>
<p>
	Yesterday we received our first helping of snow for the season; the first of what I hope will be many.&nbsp; Not much, one or two inches, but it was enough to blanket the landscape and remind us of what is to come, both the good and the bad.&nbsp; So if you haven&rsquo;t done so, pick up the yard lest your toys will be lost till May, get the shovels down from the rafters, stock up on fuel stabilizer, wax the skis, dig out the snowshoes, and don&rsquo;t forget to hike, bike and run as much as you can because the time is running out on these events.&nbsp; Winter is coming!</p>
