Down along the Green River and La Barge Creek the willows go bare early here, and the ground under them locks hard well before the calendar says winter, which is the signal R.S. Bennett Construction Co. watches for every year. Foundations and building pads are the summer trade, cut into ground that freezes fast once the sage country around Big Piney loses its cover, and the same crew and equipment that graded those sites turns to plowing once the first real storm closes them off. Pronghorn move through this country every fall on their way to lower ground, cutting trails across the flats that the wind later fills in with drifted snow, an old pattern that has nothing to do with the plow routes but crosses them anyway. The company clears driveways and access roads on ranch and building properties around Big Piney, running equipment across ground it already graded months earlier. By the coldest weeks the creek's willows stand black and bare against the snow, the only real color left on the flats until spring.