Along the narrow paths, moss wears coats of midnight, and lichens map the hidden geography of time. Leaves, once loud with summer’s green, now sleep with a faint, blue skin drawn over their faces, a gentle mummification by the cold. They glimmer like coins dropped into water, replying to footsteps with echoes that seem to come from the roots themselves. Roots—knotted, patient—clutch the secrets underground: old storms, a fox’s hollow, the fossil rhythm of foxfire. Every root is a finger pointing to stories that refuse to be simple.