A clipper off the plains doesn't knock before it comes into mid-Michigan — it just shows up after midnight, gray and going sideways, and by two the streetlights along Marsh Road are full of moving snow. AMS landscape and Snow Removal inc works those hours, pushing driveways open and cutting walkways down to bare concrete while Meridian Charter Township is still asleep underneath it. Salt goes at the aprons and the steps, the two places where a morning goes wrong fastest. There is a particular satisfaction in a black driveway at sunrise with the banks squared off on both sides, waiting for a car that never has to slow down. From Okemos out to Haslett, the job is simply this: be finished before anyone needs you to be.