The making of an action hero, pt39I love winter. A couple days ago I walked out of my apartment building to the Smokey burnt sugar smell of impending snow. I grew up in the North East where winter was winter. Here in Maryland mother nature can’t make up her mind what season it is—30 today 60 tomorrow…etc. There’s a special kind of peace in the silence of a world blanketed in new fallen snow—no sound to be heard but the soft kiss of flake upon powder. That’s what I think of when someone says the heart of winter. I remember standing on the top of a North Carolina mountain and looking out for miles—across Christmas trees, farms, valleys, and streams. I remember looking out to the horizon where the Blue Ridge Mountains met the sky across all of that, a pristine coat of alabaster powder that swallowed the sound of the wind. Here on the border of the South, it’s nice to be reminded that winter comes even here.