First real snow

It came in off the Aiguilles just after midnight and did not stop until five. Forty centimetres on the flat, more where the wind put it, and the first proper covering of the season on ground that had been bare rock a day earlier.

Marcel had the road open before six. He has done this for nineteen winters and has never once been asked to; he simply goes out. By the time the first guests came down for coffee there was nothing to see but a clean white surface and a man putting a shovel back in the shed.

There is a particular quiet that arrives with the first snow and it has nothing to do with the absence of noise. Sound stops carrying. The valley, which on a clear autumn morning will hand you a conversation from the far side of the river, gives you back nothing at all. Guests notice it before they notice the view. They stand in the doorway with their coffee and say, without quite knowing why, that it seems very still.

In the kitchen the change is practical rather than poetic. Théo moves the root vegetables down to the cold room and brings the braising pans up from the bottom shelf, where they have sat since April. The menu does not change on a date. It changes on a morning like this one.

By ten the sky had cleared to the hard washed blue that follows a night of weather, and the Dru stood out so sharply it looked cut from paper. Two guests walked as far as the second bridge and came back with wet boots and the particular satisfaction of people who have been first onto something.

The forecast has more coming Thursday. Marcel has already checked the blade.