Inside

Singing to the Radio, 2018, Archival Digital Print

The interior life becomes more pleasurable during these dark winter times. Everything contributes to the pleasures of the home — a singing puppy, a hot stew with a glass of red wine, the sound of the owl in the pine at night — the pleasures are simple but mean everything in the resonance of being.

 

New Snow

Fence Pattern, January, 2018, Archival Digital Print

A heavy snow, the world is white in the early morning hours. I’m so glad this isn’t a commuting day and I can stay inside and revel in the warmth of the hearth.

 

Snow Recordings

Highway of Tracks, 2018, Archival Digital Print

On the way to the studio I noticed the collection of tracks going down to the creek. Crossing the road where the light was better, I looked down onto the ice covered creek and there was a highway of tracks, a variety of species and their particular mark of presence running its length. I found a Coyote, a Red Fox, a Rabbit, and other things I didn’t recognize, one, I think may have been a Mink. All this happens as I go about my human concerns and they go about theirs.

 

The clarity of the cold

Trees as It Snows, 2018, Archival Digital Print

A week of cold and a deepening appreciation of shelter. The phrase a roof over your head takes on meaning in sub-zero weather.  These days I am grateful to be warm, even in four layers indoors, to have a fireplace, a stash of dry firewood, a reliable furnace, a car that starts, and the pleasures of snow dreams. Last night I met a new family.  I wish I could recall the interior of their living room which had a lot of antique paisley drapes. Their son had introduced me to them.  I had met him at a party.  The rest is vapor.  I woke up having enjoyed my dream visit to a warmer clime.  In this frigid time the nights hold magic.

 

Cold

A Hungry Hawk, 2018, Archival Digital Print

Just a snapshot from my phone yesterday, a hungry young Cooper’s Hawk has been hanging around hoping to get a warm meal. Earlier he was sitting atop one of the feeders  he was so desperate to eat. The birds disappear as soon as they catch sight and the place is empty until he leaves.

It must be very hard on a young bird trying to learn to survive in such threatening cold. Last night I watched again the PBS documentary on The Donner Party. It is tonic to anyone who feels sorry for himself or indulges in self-pity, a reminder of what being cold, far from home and lost can mean.  A young woman who survived wrote to her friend about the experience.   She ends with this advice, “Don’t take no shortcuts and hurry along the way.”  This young Hawk will have to learn that.