It hit at 11:07 on Sunday.

A truckload of hunters had just left my station, headed into town, and I walked back to the truck. Only to find my seat taken by a masked heeler.

For, like, the seventeenth time that day. I haven't quite figured it out. She knows I'm coming back to the truck. She knows I sit in the driver's seat. She knows she's going to have to move.

And yet, there she is.

So I let her stay.

And stood beside her, the door open and my arms resting on the open window sill, waiting for the next batch of hunters.

It hit me full in the face.

A gentle, firm blast of cold air. It came right from here,

From straight across the cattle guard (or "autogate", depending on where you live). Which is a little odd, since that's due west, and our cold winds almost always come from the north or northeast. The west gives us our warm chinooks.

But here it is, like the opening blast of a walk-in freezer, wrapping itself around my face and neck with delightful cold.

Five days ago I was standing in this same spot in 80+ degrees, draping vests and newspapers across the windshield to give the heelers and I even a modicum of shade.

And now, the truck thermometer says 49 degrees.

But this air mass is colder than that. Some pocket of arctic or alpine air that has found its way, intact, down to cool my face. This air is white cold, no cool summer's breeze. The white of snow, of shiny icicles hanging on eaves.

The cold of huge family dinners, drifts of snow beneath barren trees. Of long nights and short days, of horse-drawn sleighs clopping past candlelit homes.

As if such really exist in my memory, or on this planet.

But they were real, today. If only for a minute or two.

In this breath of frigid air.