We see it most vividly when a fresh blanket of snow covers the landscape. Like children in bedsheets pretending to be ghosts, the hardscape rises up in whispers, haunting us with what once was in warmer days. Of what may be again in whispers of the future.

But not now. Now there is only silence and a cold tickle on the back of the neck. Ghosts? Or merely snowflakes finding skin? The imagination brings us to our version of the truth. The only truth here is the quiet embrace of winter.