The wound road glittered in my headlights like day old ballroom confetti on the floor of an art gallery. The paintings, picture perfect, yet, unreal and uncontainable by any camera lens, passing from the front, driver, and passenger side windows showcased the finest landscape portraits of aspen, spruce and pine forests under a moonlit evening. With the light full like it was tonight, and the ground such a brilliant monochrome of whites and grey, one could be driving across the surface of that moon, or some other off world civilization, instead of being the earthbound pedestrian that they were. The stars were out, not as complete as they could because of the lunar projection and clouding, 
but more than observable than from any city or even a town. Occasionally, they would fall like tumbling ballerinas, also catching my lights, when the wind blew them from the tops of those towering evergreens that bent and rustled, chirping a hush to the exterior creatures tucked away in warm holes for their long naps.
The radio volume was more than just leveled down. It was off. No music. No sound except the engine humming against the background breeze. No sense using any more machines than is necessary to complete this journey. Pulling from the main road through the town of quaint shops and college students, trading their business hours at sunset, onto the county road up the mountain, the clouds briefly obscured the sky to dump mounds of those glittering stars onto my thirty mile per hour spacecraft. I dared not go any faster. I punched the power button on the music to concentrate on my navigation through the asteroid belt. Actually, it was an audio book, the latest by some popular novelist, intended to ease the monotony of two days from Texas to here. In this treacherous weather up these twisting ice paths it would be impossible to pay attention to the climax of a twenty two hour tale. I would need all of my senses to get from point A to B safely. There will be time to listen to that later. For now I am concentrating on this.
After the clouds passed and the stars returned to the sky, hearing the shudder of the trees depositing more snowy obscurities between the wheels and the gravel of this secondary road, twice removed from major thoroughfares, I am reminded that I have control of the sounds inside the vehicle, but I pass the opportunity for the silence of the world outside. Another turn. Another hill. A rocky embankment going up on one side and down on the other into a dry creek bed that will fill with both water and now sleeping animals by the spring. The tires slip underneath, they skid just a little. The fresh stars are slick and this part is steep. It is not enough to cause worry, although there is no barricade keeping me on this incline, keeping me from being found in the spring in that creek bed with those awakened animals dancing around the torn metal of my car. This is it. My last hill. A straightaway. A subtle curve. Then the driveway.
It has only been three weeks since I left it. Three weeks is a short span for a long time. Much can happen. Much has happened. The circular leaves of the Aspen patches, already mostly yellowed and to the ground, still shedding the last of their energies, are now hidden under the three foot banks. Those banks block the last fifty foot bit of asphalt leading to the garage, the last fifty feet of my journey. The mechanized doorway growls from its slumber, illuminating a dim glow from behind its opening jaw onto the distance I will have to shovel before feeding it my car for the night. I pull as close to the bank as possible, allowing scant room for any other car to pass, if there were any other cars traveling this road this night. I retie my shoes, leaving the engine running for a last shot of heat before killing it. The carabineer on my key ring hooks to a belt loop of my blue jeans, not the most waterproof of fabrics, but they should do the job. Denim will repel the water when it melts. The hook will keep my keys from falling into the snowy abyss as I bound onto the initial bank, thinking erroneously to sink to the bottom. The kick up from the plow turned into solid ice. This will not be easy. I could leave it here and deal with it in the morning except that very same plow that turned the banks to ice will be coming this way in the morning to clear the roads. It will have to be moved tonight. I sigh and continue on foot, staying mostly on top of the crystals at first, until I am not. I break through the crust, falling past my knees, and high step to the garage, where there are actual snow boots and bibbers and ski jackets and gloves. And shovels.
The first order of business is to jack the heat to sixty five, warmer than I usually keep it, colder than where I have come. My car will be safe on the road for a little while, a long while, probably even all night, but it would be inconsiderate to risk it. Second, I tap the water heater to make sure it is still full, then turn the dial from “Vacation” to “Warm A.” The propane shushes like the wind for the split second before ignition. It whooshes and fills the mind with imaginings of the hot shower that will be taken once the work of getting the vehicle secure is done. With that in mind, I check the water pressure and my heart sinks. None. A trickle dribbles from the kitchen sink at full blast. The bathroom is the same. Maybe it takes a minute I lie to myself, not wanting to consider the possibility of a broken pipe.
I let the water run while warming up the snow thrower, different than a snow “blower” like how I normally call it. There is no such thing as a leaf “thrower.” I guess the process is different. I take a high powered flashlight from the stereo shelf in the sitting room, don the snow boots, and set out to the backyard to get under the house from the front. The back porch has just as much as the drive. Opening the door will let it spill inside. Out the covered side, down the rock steps that are only dunes of thick powder, to the gate, sealed, barring my entrance by its own two foot drift. I return to the garage for a shovel and a pair of gloves to dig it out with the minimal amount of room cleared for me to slip through it into the back yard. There are moments where the gardens dropping off from the covered side are examined. Could those rivulets, those tiny valleys of white protruding from the underside of the house and coursing down the hill be the flooding of the basement? Will I open the basement to a sea? Where did those footprints come from? There was no time to consider the footprints. It was only distraction to get my mind from one problem and onto the next. It will be filed and dealt with in the proper order of importance.
There is no sea. The basement is dry. Moving beyond the dryness and light of the small storage area into darkness and sheets of plastic vapor barriers separating man from earth, I step out under the PVC and copper, testing their flow with a glove. I listen for drips and, god forbid, gushes. There are none. I check the pump. The water pressure is null. The needle has dropped to zero. Surprisingly, this calms me. I remember the silence, the lack of flow, no drips, no water on the floor, but it is the silence that comforts me. The electric pump is not running. I remember shutting that specific breaker off before leaving town. I laugh at myself. It will not be the last time tonight.
Having checked that from the to-do list, closed all the now spraying faucets turned on, I return to the situation of the driveway. The thrower is warmed from the outlet. It still takes a few tries to start it, a dozen pumps on the choke. The engine guns and dies, guns and dies, starts. I back it in the garage to the line where the first pass will begin. The speed is set to the slowest setting. The clutch is engaged. We go. Over mounds, under packed bridges, backing it up, forward again, rocking it to glimpse occasional spottings of the black asphalt. The first pass barely makes it to the end of the driveway, right before the ice bank created by the plow, when the tread rolls off. The machine is rendered useless. I laugh at myself again. It is better than cursing. It takes a good half hour to pull the damned thing the fifty feet back to the garage where it can be fixed. Tomorrow. It is not being fixed tonight. My progress would be quicker with a shovel. I take the crooked armed one and the straight to the road where my car is parked. The motion sensor light clicks off. It is dark. I am under the moon again. I am under the stars. They begin falling once more.
I scoop away faster than they can refill, clearing a big enough section to pull the vehicle off the road. A metal shovel and pick is needed to break the ice. It chunks into small enough pieces to toss off to the side. Their purity is contaminated with brown, beige, chocolate, and black road grime, gravel, and rock. More chips away. More thrown to the side. Chip. Toss. Chip Toss. It takes an hour to open the path still needing clearing. I am covered in glitter. It clings to my skull cap, body heat melting it, the exterior temperature freezing it once again. The sky has ceased its falling. The clouds have moved onward. Orion, the bears, and the seven sisters look down upon my efforts. I take a moment to appreciate them, waving to my friends in the Betelgeuse system, who may be looking at our Sun from their own night sky. Under these stars, these trees, these mountains, these night skies of this moon it is hard to feel insignificant, unimportant, undertaking equally as insignificant tasks like shoveling snow to get your car in the garage. I wonder what machines they have over there to accomplish daily maneuvers. A shovel is such a simple, intuitive tool that I am sure the most primitive of societies have crafted them. What are their landscapes like? What about their homes? Do they also have strange footprints temporarily fossilized in crystals when they return home from vacation? These mental wanderings carry me through the space of time and snow large enough to barely fit the car.
Sitting in the driver seat, turning the ignition, taking a breath, pulling the automatic transmission stick into reverse, backing into a better angle to wheel it into the lot, forward, failing and trying again, backward, forward, succeeding, braking, taking another breath, killing the ignition and leaving the keys on the driver seat as I exit the vehicle to start on the remainder of the path into the garage was a nice break. Three shovels, three tosses, a strafed step, three shovels, tosses, step, shovel, toss, shovel, toss, shovel, toss, step, repeat. We are dancing together to the music of the midnight forest. The first shovelful takes a foot and a half brittle chunk from the top. The second opens the ground from the sandy underside. The third finishes with the excess that has fallen into my wake. Step. The fallen stars shimmer over my shoulder, thankful for their last chance to rise and fall. They cling and I brush them away to glisten in the night once more, to laugh, to play for another second before they are laid to rest. Shovel, toss, shovel, toss, shovel, toss, step. It is a single direction waltz. The spotlight from the motion sensor shines on our performance. Shovel. Toss. Step. We change up the movements. Gracefully she accepts and adapts to them like the beautiful dancer she is. We include the Rest, the Breather, the Double Step, the Quadruple Shovel, the Fifth, the Forward Toss, the Change of Hands, the Dip, and the Shimmy. She follows our lead. We finish a line to the garage, change our direction to head back out to the street. What is normally the fourth step change in a traditional dance is our random hundredth. We are not the traditional couple. We never pretended to be. Maybe we did but not now. Not in these woods all alone with just us two. Not without others watching. Shovel, toss. Step. I spin her once, twice, three times at the end of the second line at the bumper of my car. She is brutal. She wants more. I acquiesce, inable to help myself against her powerful will. Shovel, fail, shovel again, toss, change hands, shovel, toss, shovel, shovel, shovel, toss. Step. Wobble, balance, shovel, toss, rest, shovel, breather, toss, breather, shovel. Step. Our rhythm falters. I am getting tired and there lay still much more before me. She persists, never weakening. I finish the line and make the next pass. To conserve energy I push the crooked shovel along the passes already made, gathering the leftover flakes in the indentation until they are a complete mouthful to toss. Back and forth over and over again. This is my new move, the Drag. I return to our usual steps with renewed vigor finishing with drag to break the banks. There must only be three or four more passes to go. 
After the next I Cut a Line into the bank. I tell her, “This is where I will end.”
She laughs at me, urging me back into the dance. Three shovels, three tosses. Step. The second wind his returned my strength for the crescendo. Seeing a definitive endpoint quickens my pace. Shovel, toss, shovel, toss. Step. The bank where it is cut falls onto my sore feet. The blue jeans are soaked and iced. My machines will be secured tonight. My pump will be on. My shower will be hot. My heater will keep me warm. My shovels will hang on a rack. My snow thrower will still be missing a leg, but my car will be inside for the night.
“This is enough,” I tell her.
“Your car will not fit through this,” she whispers softly to me, not wanting to let the dance end yet.
It will. I will make it. Even if I have to drive partially over a bank, which I do, it will. The garage door growls again this night, the light comes on behind the closing mouth, grinding its gears to consume these machines and spit us out in the morning when it is scheduled for the stars to fall once more.
