Most of the year, Wilson Dirt Works is out shaping the ground around Inman — grading a building pad, cutting a terrace into a wheat field so spring rain runs off instead of carving a gully — and come winter, snow simply joins the list of things this crew is used to moving. Snow behaves differently on ground this flat; without a hill or a windbreak to catch it, it slides across open fields until it hits a fence line, a machine shed, or the first house at the edge of town, and that's exactly where the work piles up. The crew clears driveways along Inman's short grid of residential streets first, then heads out to the farm places where a gravel lane has drifted over between the mailbox and the house. There's a particular quiet to this part of McPherson County in winter — empty section roads, wind moving snow across open fields instead of wheat stubble, nothing but the rail line through the middle of town carrying an occasional freight — and clearing a lane out here is often the only sign of anyone's presence for a mile in either direction. By the time the machines shut down for the night, the yards and drives they've touched are simply passable again, which out here is exactly the point.