It's Cold in the Mountains

My view is extraordinary.  In the distance the mountains are covered in snow.  The overgrown pine trees look as if a painter carelessly slashed their boughs with white paint.  It smells like balsam and winter and the windows are cold to the touch and wet with dampness.  I am inside, but every bone in my body tells me that I am in the forest for I feel the cold through the stone walls.

Soft barely audible footsteps echo quietly on the  floors.  I turned then as if that movement would make me have a connection to the silent man walking the corridors.  Was it time for prayer already?  I opened the door then, hoping to catch a glimpse of him but he moved quickly and deliberately. He was gone.