At three in the morning, with the storm still coming down over Saxon Hill, Essex belongs to plow trucks and the occasional deer. DJ's Tree Service works those hours through the winter, opening driveways, clearing turnarounds and shoveling walks so that morning arrives on schedule for everybody else. Snow up here does not so much fall as accumulate in layers, a wet base and a dry fluff on top, and then the wind moves the whole business into the one place you needed clear. Getting ahead of that, storm after storm, is the entire discipline: come early, come back, take it down to the surface. There is a quiet reward in pulling out of a plowed dooryard at dawn while the house sleeps on.