My period arrives while I am skiing in the backcountry of Whistler with a group of friends. The low winter sun highlights the evocative shapes of the wind-eroded snow. Arctic outflow turns my cheeks pink and my toes cold. I skin up the side of a mountain, through alpine firs shrouded in bright green lichens.

I meet Chris for coffee, and he tells me that his wife is four months pregnant. I am so happy for him, genuinely happy, because I can see in his eyes how much this means to him. He always wanted to have a family, and he never gave up, even as he aged through his mid-forties. She became pregnant at the exact time that I started to try.

I didn't write about the move, the crying in the parking lot of my old apartment. The impossible hollow sadness of leaving the park behind. The time since has been hard. Every faucet that leaks, every electrical outlet that fails to function, is a punch of sadness and frustration.

But as I fix things, one at a time, the future starts to become more clear. There is a quiet calm with living up here, on the slope of a mountain, the edge of the infinite forest right there.