© 2015 Wazari Wazir | A Women Walking Along The Bank of Angara River in Winter | Russia Winter is a long, open time. The nights are as dark as the end of the world. The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can’t help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of…