Hudson sits on the east bank of the Merrimack, where the ground lifts away from the water into pine ridges and the long wooded lanes out past Musquash. Snow finds those driveways first — the ones that bend uphill under hemlock and hold the cold well past noon. Patriot Landscaping works the winter side of that geography, plowing driveways and lots, opening walkways and entries, and coming back through when the wind rearranges what it has already moved. There is a particular pleasure in a drive cut clean to the pavement before the first headlights swing down Lowell Road: two dark lanes, banks squared off at the edges, a house that can leave on time. That is the whole of it — a town that wakes able to move.