Recycled

Already yesterday’s snow has been reincarnated as today’s puddles and slick-spots: the metempsychosis of midwinter mud.

This is my belated day eighteen contribution to this month’s River of Stones.

 

After freezing rain

Before dawn, snow glows under a creme-brulee crust. Icy twigs on back-lit trees glisten, etched in silver on a black velvet sky.

This is my Day Nineteen submission to a river of stones, a month-long challenge to notice (and record) one thing every day. I’ll be posting my “stones” both here and on Twitter, where submissions are tagged as #aros. Enjoy!

 

Watch your step

Beneath the snow, slick as sin, lurk the frozen footprints of last week’s walks.

This is my Day Eight submission to a river of stones, a month-long challenge to notice (and record) just one thing every day. I’ll be posting my “stones” both here and on Twitter, where submissions are tagged as #aros. Enjoy!

 

Crystalline

Overnight, yesterday’s snowmelt becomes this morning’s ice, a bubble of impermanence crystallized in time.

This is my Day Three submission to a river of stones, a month-long challenge to notice (and record) just one thing every day. I’ll be posting my “stones” both here and on Twitter, where submissions are tagged as #aros.

Care to join us at any time during the month of January? Click here for more information. Enjoy!

 

Lightness

Although I don’t typically enjoy walking on frozen sidewalks, I never would have spotted this fallen feather had I not been watching my (icy) step.

This is my day-late contribution to this week’s Photo Friday theme, Lightness.

 

Crystalline

On Monday we had unseasonably mild temperatures and torrential rains which melted much of the remaining snow cover, leaving puddles of snow-melt that froze overnight into intricate crystalline shapes: the sparkle of geometric shards underfoot.

 

Thin-skinned

I’m still oddly fascinated with images of the thin skin of ice that’s been forming on Goose Pond, the crystal interstices between solid and liquid mesmerizing me with their jagged and jutting lines. How is it, I wonder, that something fluid and flowing suddenly, upon reaching a certain magical temperature, transforms into something entirely different, the brittle fragility of ice belying water’s amorphous liquidity?

The crystal patterns of freezing water look like scarring skin, and the thin solid film on Goose Pond is a skin, a delicate membrane containing the parameters of something vast, murky, and deep. Never having sounded Goose Pond, I don’t know precisely how deep it is, but having swum there, I know the point at which its bottom drops from beneath my treading toes and the temperature of its water suddenly goes from sun-warmed to bone-chillingly cold. Like a mute creature, Goose Pond keeps its innards hidden; now in winter it grows a hide that is streaked with striations, long crystal lines knitting a tough integument against intrusion.

We humans are also vast, deep, and murky creatures, our infinite psyches being mostly unplumbed and our daily interactions merely skating the surface of consciousness. How much deeper than any pond do our spirits surge? At what point do our psychic depths drop beneath our treading toes, chilling us with the unfathomable?

Today on New Year’s Eve, we skate another sort of interstice, the intricate edge of Now and Then. We say a leopard can’t change its spots, but our penchant for New Year’s resolutions suggests we see ourselves as aquatic, able to morph from liquid to solid then perhaps even to pure air: sublime.

On the surface, both consciousness and time are textured, alluring onlookers with the illusory promise of solidity. Do you dare skate the membraneous film between Now and Then, and do you dare pierce the surface to plumb your own hidden depths?

Happy New Year to one and all!

 

Inverse proportions

It seems I’m still fascinated by the sight of inverted trees reflected in ice-skimmed water. Now that I’m not under the grading gun, I can take Reggie for a leisurely weekday morning walk at Goose Pond, a time when we literally have the place to ourselves. Although both water and ice are interesting in their own right, what’s been catching my eye lately is the jagged edge between liquid and solid, each with its own reflective and refractive properties. What a wondrous kind of magic there is in our everyday midst that stitches liquid into solid one branching crystal at a time.