“See that pile of grass?” my grandfather points. The grass, flecked with crimson paintbrush and amethyst lupine, is shoved unceremoniously — or extremely ceremoniously, I cannot tell — between speckled granite boulders on a hillcrest. “Yellow-bellied marmot. They use these wildflowers for their winter burrows. Look!” The marmot’s head emerges, whiskers twitching.

My grandfather knows the breath of these mountains. The inhale of the summer solstice, lungs full of pine and river rock and larkspur. The winter exhale, the Coriolis effect bringing feral storms that transform the landscape.

The winds shift. Our ski tips fall through deep powder snow. Snowflakes billow off our chests in white flurries as we float over a hillcrest. I wonder if that marmot is sleeping beneath us, dreaming in crimson and amethyst.