Some January nights the storm slides off the Grand Mesa and keeps coming, and by four in the morning every driveway in town has a smooth white lid on it. G Snow Removal LLC. is out in that window — plow first, shovel the walk and the step, clear enough room that a car can back out without a running start. Valley snow packs down and glazes over fast once tires touch it, so getting there before the neighborhood wakes up is most of the work. There's a specific quiet to a street at that hour, engine and blade and nothing else, and a specific pride in leaving one clean rectangle after another behind. By sunrise it looks like the storm skipped those houses entirely.