Notes on Winter

Winter turns a tangle of branches into festive birthday streamers.

Winter teaches patience. Mallards sit in icy cold water, waiting for the warmth of spring. We all sit in a hushed silence, watching fields fill with a swathing of snow. We wait.

Winter teaches delicacy. As I walked to take the pictures for the video below, I encountered a snarl of branches covered in inch-thick white snow. On one branch, the snow had slid off the branch completely, but still hung, draped from the branch independently in a crystalline "U" shape. One wrong move, and this delicate sculpture would have become dust.

Winter teaches quiet. In a winter-clad wood, trees creak and crack, bending as lovers to embrace one another. The energy reverberates from the trees. Even in this gray/white expanse, there is warmth and places where life perseveres: in a shallow pool of water partially frozen, I saw tiny pale green leaves swaying in the ebb and flow of water ripples. A dead fish floats just under the glass-like surface of ice, its eyes fixed and glazed staring up to Heaven through this white frozen landscape.