When my kids were small, I read them a picture book called “They All Saw a Cat.” It wasn’t really a plot so much as an invitation: Imagine how the world shifts when someone else is looking at it. Two creatures in the same place, experiencing two completely different realities. My kids a ccepted that idea immediately. Children usually do. Lately, that book comes back to me on my early drive to work because I’ve been thinking about how easily we lose the ability to see the world with that kind of attention. It’s still dark when I leave. The house is asleep. Park City hasn’t quite woken up, either. But on the mountain, the snowcats have already been working most of the night, their lights gliding over the slopes long before anyone else stirs. I look for them every morning. Part of it is comfort. But part of it is wanting to imagine the mountain before the rush of the day erases whatever was there overnight. The operators up there catch things the rest of us never will: a fox stitching across a run, hare tracks in corduroy, a moose stepping through the cold trees before first light. Later, riding the chairlift, the evidence remains. Tracks feather across the snow, crossing and recrossing like dashed routes on an old maritime map. Each animal follows its own small logic, unaware of all the others until their paths briefly intersect. The mountain writes its own story every night, most of it gone by first chair. I think about the snowcat operators sometimes. Do they listen to music or keep it quiet with only the hum of the machine? Which songs would comprise a snowcat operator’s playlist? Does the sunrise still move them? Or has repetition worn down beauty to something ordinary? I used to set alarms just to watch the sunrise, no matter where I traveled. Mountains, ocean, desert — it didn’t matter. I wanted to see how the light behaved in a place that wasn’t home. I’d get up early, step outside barefoot if needed, and watch the first color over whatever horizon was available. Somewhere along the way, routine sanded that instinct down. I started sleeping through the very thing I used to chase. My own mornings run on rails these days. My youngest, 6, sleeps surrounded by her stuffed foxes — the ones she carries everywhere, names, arranges, and speaks to with a seriousness adulthood erodes. At bedtime she gathers all of them to climb the stairs, arms overflowing. One tumbles — she bends to grab it, and three more slide out. She sighs and starts over. I stand behind her trying not to show the impatience I’ve built into our nightly routine. Movement without attention. One day, her stuffed foxes will end up in a bin or closet somewhere, forgotten. She’ll no longer wake up and miss me in her mornings the way she does now. If I let myself think too long about what I miss by leaving before she wakes, I wouldn’t make it to work at all. Numbness makes routine possible. So I drive. And the snowcats pull me back. Their lights move slowly along the ridge — steady, deliberate, working through the dark while the town sleeps. I watch and try to imagine the mountain from inside those cabs: what shapes appear before dawn, what small stories unfold, what the world looks like when seen at that pace. That wondering is what stops me. The simple act of imagining the world through someone else’s eyes. How the same place can look entirely different depending on who’s the one looking out at it. Considering the snowcats every morning reminds me there’s a pace I’ve let slip. Attention I’ve misplaced. They move slowly enough to register what’s in front of them. Trying to see the mountain through their lens, I’m reminded there’s wonder in trying to perceive the world the way someone else moves through it. The snowcats’ lights edge up the ridge. I just need to slow down long enough to notice — before the day erases what was there. Heather Bryant is a Park City resident, writer, longtime educator, and mother of three. She writes educational curriculum and essays on parenting, conservation, and the importance of place. The post What the snowcat saw appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less