Since someone posted a bit of thiers, I'll post a very small bit of mine. I don't share much of my writing online for obvious reasons, seeing as there's no way to protect it. The paragraph structure is a bit off, because this is a "rough draft," and I never do much to define paragraphs since I always end up adding and taking away from the writing to a huge extent.
Ghostly white tendrils of steam curled from my nostrils, rolling up my cold-numbed cheeks and flitting past my eyes like the long forgotten spirits of an icy grave. At least I had a visualization; I could no longer feel the breath that escaped my frost-burned lungs, my nose and lips swollen, heavy, and insensitive with cold. Every time I blinked my bleary eyes against the stark whiteness of the snow, glistening to a near-blinding perfection in the sun, I could feel the thin, dark lashes clinging together as tears froze in the harsh winter air. Pausing for a moment, allowing the monotonous crunch of my well-worn boots to cease and leave me in silence, I raised a heavily gloved hand over my eyes, shielding them to better survey my surroundings. On mornings like this, snow recently fallen and sunlight just barely peeking over the jagged horizon of the Adirondacks, it was easy to become lost in the cold and barren expanse of endless trees, rocks, and small, weaving mountain creeks.
I cast my gaze briefly to the distant sibling peaks of the mountains. With the glowing orb of the sun just barely balanced above the landscape, the precipice of each great snow-capped behemoth was transformed into a fang within a hungry maw poised to rend it from the heavens. Even if the sun somehow escaped its hungry stalker, I knew its warmth would be greedily devoured by the cold Nor’easter wind that had carried in seven inches of fresh new snow the previous night. Shuddering once in the frigid air, I tore my gaze away from the distance and focused on the forest around me.
Gargantuan deposits of cold, gray stone jutted erratically from the snow-smothered earth, ice glazing each moss-covered rock face in treachery and beauty. Here and there, a deep crack one of the formations revealed glistening daggers of icicles, hanging effortlessly from the steep and slippery edges around them. It was gorgeous, but it was not what I was looking for. Stiff, numb fingers moved clumsily towards the glorified canvas fanny pack given to me by my employers - the Adirondacks Institute for Therianthropology - which now served as a useful carrying case for maps and other vital supplies. Pulling out the cold, metal and glass disk of my compass, I scrutinized the arrows, face taut with concentration. Turning my back to the monoliths of stone behind me, I pointed the small red arrow to the north, careful not to move the compass housing, the continued Northwest, only slightly adjusting my course.
It was mildly worrisome that, after nearly a year of carefully tracking and observing pack #15-A, I still occasionally lost my way along the three mile trek from the remote AIT station to the outer borders of the pack’s territory. Perhaps today I could blame the recent snow casting the landscape in an unearthly alabaster brilliance, but the fact of the matter was, my sense of direction was just as poor as my other senses. How dwarfed I so often felt in the presence of my subjects, their magnificent ears and noses detecting me before I even left the lodge while I was lucky to spot them from a few dozen yards away. Relying on magnets and paper to guide me haphazardly through the mountains, I followed creatures whose hunting routes carried them miles away from their home base in all directions, always to return with efficiency and certainty as though guided by some superior internal compass.
