Wide swathes of open prairie flanked the forgotten road. An apathetic observer to Midwinter’s stillness, the sky drifted aimlessly in shades of gray. Time passed by without purpose, without accomplishment, without change. Thick sheets of snow and ice, layered deep, left the place muffled, silenced, dead.

One afternoon, the rider came over the kill. Riding his humming motorcycle, he was simple, fast, and undeniable. He came like a gust of wind, but more passionate and heated than the gusts that piled snow on the road. The bike was red, slashing through the gray desolation like a streak of hot blood on cold concrete. Speed carried the rider across the sleeping plain ahead of the cold winds.

Alone, the bike was as cold as the layered ice beside the road, but with its rider it was an unstoppable force. The seemingly immovable terrain was made to bend to his will, the machine his instrument, and his expression of life through movement. Design and purpose flowed from it like a mountain stream. The engine’s steady growl was a knife, demanding notice. The well-polished chassis shone defiance. The speed of the interconnected parts was the cornerstone of the rider’s art. Without the speed, the bike would die, and the rider would be at the mercy of Midwinter.

The rider’s eyes were as bright as the motorcycle’s finish; his mind a razor. The bike did not stop, nor did he. He ran free like a spring stallion, coercing the land into activity. Life appeared in the form of an occasional groundhog, accosted out of its slumber by the loud purr of the bike, as a startled bird, or as a bounding buck and doe. The heat of the rider’s passing soon faded, but the slashing motion burned into the frozen winter image cut the stoic clouds apart. A wide plan of blue opened in the sky, and the deep blanket on the earth began to shift and crack and melt away.