I have changed tense again, and I am taking a machete to weedy words. It has come alive for me again, edit, edit, edit!

I imagined trying to fall in love with this gridded cement city, how I would have to surrender to its massive buildings and leave the mountains and ocean behind me. This is a hard task to fathom knowing that ice will build on the cement sidewalks in December and not melt until March. The West may be wild but survival skills take on a completely new meaning during a midwestern winter.