Pittsfield sits high for a Massachusetts city, near a thousand feet, and winter finds it early here. Alpine Services works the hour before dawn, when the wind comes off Onota Lake with nothing to slow it and the Taconic ridge is still just a darker line in the west. The work is snow, start to finish: driveways plowed open, steps and walks cut clean by hand, salt down before the melt has a chance to turn glassy. There is a particular satisfaction in a driveway that looks untouched by the storm that just crossed it. By the time the streetlights blink off, the ground is ready for the day.