One late autumn morning a few years ago, I woke up to the sun rising in the east into a pink haze of clouds over a lake of utter stillness.  The air was colder than usual, which wasn’t saying much that year, after a fall of above average temperatures.  But I could see my breath and the grass by the lake was sparkling with frost. The water was like glass, the surface broken only by a tiny duck that had decided to stick around these parts for a little longer before heading south for the winter.  A...