SNO CONE

December 21. 2011.  A singular morning in December in the land where I was born.  The trees in the distance were enveloped in frost, glistening as the sun considered its rising.  No snow graced us or the land, but this stunning steel blue sky with the shimmering white was captivating.  What else to do, but look and wonder how long it could remain, because surely it had vanished as the day wore on.

SNOW MONOCHROME

February 12, 2011. Snow blankets the ground as far as you can see, and meets the sky but barely changes color, impacted only by the difference of sky and earth. There must be a gradual rise behind the figures moving against this backdrop, but maybe not, maybe it is a sheer cliff. I know what it is because I am familiar, and I understand the figures and playing snow softball. We are compelled to go outdoors and vigorously trammel the snow, expand ourselves against the elements, exert our right to be - here and now.

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

December 26, 2009. The road to home, after a snowy night. Or the road looking back. No matter how I look, I know where I am, where I’ve been, where I’m going to, and to where I will return. This single road, freshly plowed, wide and white, has recorded countless steps of children on their way to school, like the grains of sand on a beach. My sister-in-law, who came from the northern woods, once remarked that this vast open sky could cause melancholy, by sheer dint of its scope. She might be right, and maybe that is what the settlers traveling over the prairie felt. How much warmer must it be to have trees overhead and sheltering. Alas, that was not to be in this fertile farm country, which was cleared to make way for farm after farm and small town after small town. But it is where I took my first steps and it is to where I am drawn from time to time, like a fish to its place of beginning.