Our world has changed.

Below us today we found a landscape of greys and browns, with only scattered traces of Fall's glory.

A bed made ready for Winter's snows.

After we located our tenth and final elk, we headed north and homeward on the leeward side of the mountains. With disappointment I looked down on my view of green conifers, grey leafless aspens, and tan sagebrush lands beyond.

Then I looked out the pilot's side. There the clouds were still fighting for jurisdiction over the skies, with pockets of open air down to mountainsides bathed in snow. Tall conifers dusted in white standing above the new land covering.

No fair! I complained. You got the pretty side!

"I can fix that." the pilot responded, as we immediately banked to the west. And then north again, after we were both surrounded by clouds and a land of winter white.

And that's how we went home. Down the spine of the Continental Divide.