On a walk through the trails on East Chop, we found summer's palette of greens almost entirely displaced by browns and grays. Our eyes were drawn, hungry for signs of life, to the hardy greens of cedars and to patches of lichens along the path. Now the path of the new year leads us into February, another month that has its whole being in the season of winter. But unlike our lives, winter is a story whose ending we already know. Each gray day of February will be bearable because we know it carries us closer to the advent of spring.