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I purposely bypass this canyon in the summer. The first major trailhead north of Dolores, it holds magnetic sway for those headed north in search of a high-country fix. But it's winter now. There's a 2-foot snow base, and Tom and I are the only ones around.

I strap on snowshoes and head toward the distant wooden footbridge that crosses the Dolores River. We begin this hike as we normally do, separately. "One must have a mind of winter," as poet Wallace Stevens says. We prefer to begin hikes and snowshoes in the solitude of our own thought, the cadence of our individual breath. Eventually, I will stop and wait for him to catch up.

About 30 feet from the car I claw my way over a huge pile of snow created by a plow. I chunk down the opposite side, plant my pole for support and in less than a nano-second I'm flying forward with more than a little help from gravity. There's a cattle guard down there, and my support pole went right through. I'm shoulder-first onto the white padded ground, my dog starring down into my face.

Thanks to recent unseasonable rains, the Dolores River runs high - part ice, part snow and part crystal cold flow. But December's snows have finally arrived and conditions underfoot are excellent. Once across the walking bridge, the trail splits as it confronts a steep, north-facing slope of leggy middle-aged aspen. I turn right and head up the mountainside toward Bear Creek drainage, skirting the private lands at the confluence of Bear Creek and the Dolores. It takes about 20 minutes to leave the sound of the highway's diesel trucks behind. Now it's just me, 6 inches of fresh powder and the shush of my snowshoes. Nirvana.

Aspen yields to gnarly oak as the aspect turns more southerly. The trail follows a gentle contour into Douglas fir and Engelmann spruce and before I know it, I'm in the midst of old-growth ponderosa. There's few color combinations as stunning as ruddy, cinnamon ponderosa bark and fresh snow. The fire-scarred giants tower above hardy, hearty stands of older aspen - smoky, silvery sage trunks that soften the eye, carry me far from the mundane world and the persistent list of things to do.

As always with excursions into wild lands, I am alone but never alone. Deer and elk tracks surround me. There are many indentations in the snow where they have bedded down on this south-facing mountainside. There is ample scat and chewed stripped aspen trunks, and even, to my astonishment, browsed ponderosa. These spirits are hungry. It hasn't cleared freezing for a week now. I wonder if this could this be the cold winter, as of old, that will thin the elk herds and end the bark beetle infestation.

I stop on a sunny, pine duff circle that overlooks Bear Creek. Tom soon catches up as we shed our coats and pull out some cheese and a couple of apples. The sound of the flowing creek pervades our mountainside perch. The long drainage of Bear Creek threads eastward toward the continental divide and distant high peaks that erupt from timberline. We could walk for hours if we chose; or just go a mile or two along the lichen-stained, ocher cliffs. These lands used to receive over 14 feet of snow above 8,000 feet. In those days, settlers attached one-by-four planks of Engelmann spruce to the bottoms of their feet in order to get around. Today a different picture has emerged. I doubt those snow amounts still hold up in the midst of climate change; and my nifty, light MSR snowshoes are a far cry from boards.

This outing doesn't offer up blow-your-mind, 13,000-foot scenic vistas and surround-yourself peaks. Better to think of it as a snow meditation, where imagination rules. I stare upon the creek below and spy a buckskin-clad trapper emerging from the thick, blue spruce. An old codger with an icy beard, he checks his lines in hopes of a catch that will yield a beaver pelt to see him through winter's harsh, long nights. Beaver tail is delicious, a friend tells me, recalling his boyhood days when a pelt brought $50. Yes, one must have a mind of winter along Bear Creek.

It's enough to make Dolores, "Our Lady of Sorrows," crack a frosty smile.

Christina Nealson is author of Living on the Spine: A Woman's Life in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and author/photographer of New Mexico's Sanctuaries, Retreats and Sacred Places (Westcliffe publishers). You can visit her at christinanealson.com.