At three in the morning on the county roads east of Durango the sky looks bottomless and the thermometer sits well below zero. Top Hand Snow and Ice Removal is out in it, running the long ranch driveways off Florida Road and the lanes toward Vallecito and Bayfield, stacking snow into banks and cutting a clean lane for whoever has to be at work by seven. Plowing, shoveling walks and gate aprons, and treating the ice that forms where the sun never reaches all winter — that is the whole list, and in this county it is plenty. The valley holds a hard inversion for days after a storm, so nothing softens and every pass has to be right the first time. Then the eastern sky goes pale over the Piedra country and the shift is finished.