Three in the morning, a foot of new snow, and Powers Boulevard reduced to two tracks of headlight — that is the shift. Denver Snow CPS runs it, plowing and clearing in Cimarron Hills while the rest of the neighborhood is still under blankets. Snow at this altitude is deceptive: light and dry in one storm, heavy as poured concrete in the next, and either way the sun will start attacking it by ten. The point is to be finished before then — drives opened, walks shoveled to the edge, a path to the mailbox nobody has to guess at. Waking up to that is the whole idea.