Long before the school buses start their routes, the crew from Abe's Low Cost Tree Removal is already working the cottonwood-lined streets near the Arkansas River, plow blades scraping frost off Hutchinson driveways while the rest of the block still sleeps. This is wheat and wind country, where a January norther can bury a carport in an afternoon and a backyard oak can drop a limb under that same kind of weight — the eye that reads a stressed tree in July reads a snowdrift in February just as easily. Abe's clears the walk to the front step, opens the driveway to the street, and pushes back what the wind piled against the garage door, working its way along the river streets until the block looks normal again. There is a particular satisfaction in a straight plow line down a quiet street at first light, the kind of clean edge that says somebody was here before anyone else was awake. By the time the sand dunes out past the edge of town have shed their thin cover of snow, this crew has already turned its attention north, watching for whatever the plains send toward Hutchinson next.