At the weird moment between just before it’s officially winter, when the snow is already falling in the mountains, Silas and I drove up to Colorado for a long weekend. Nederland is a small town at 8,000 feet about a half hour from Boulder. We ended up there accidentally on a trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park in 2016, and liked it so much we went back for a week in 2018. Silasi had a work meeting nearby, and we realized the only way we’d have time to go again this year was if we mixed work and weekend.

Winter in Nederland lasts from October to May, as the proprieter of the outdoor clothing store, Mountain Man, told us on our first trip here. As predicted, there was a snowstorm on our second day. The reservoir in the center of town still wasn’t frozen over, so the snow melted and the water steamed as it hit the cold temperatures.

With all the snow, we thought that some of the rocky, narrow and steep mountain trails would be inaccessible or too slippery. So we headed for a great trail just outside of town at the Caribou Ranch Open Space, that we remembered from our previous visit. It’s fairly wide and flat, so it was an easy snowy walk, especially since we’d brought our micro spikes.

On our last morning, before starting the drive back to Santa Fe, we walked up some of the streets that climb up and look down over the town and reservior. The air was crisp and cold, but the sun came out, and we met a fox along the way.

Nederland is officially one of my happy places. With mountains, water, snow, foxes, horses, and a lot of crystals at the rock shop it ticks all the boxes. We schemed about how to have a mountain cabin one day, worked, got frustrated with work, went back to scheming about said mountain cabin and took a lot of baths.