Opening paragraphs.................

In the cold, nearly colorless light of a New England winter, two men on horseback traveled the coast road below Boston, heading north.  A foot or more of snow covered the landscape, the remnants of a Christmas storm that had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other.  Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet.  Packed ice in the road, ruts as hard as iron, made the going hazardous, and the riders, mindful of the horses, kept at a walk.

-David McCullough,  John Adams

thanks for the reminder Michael