Gold and Pewter

Occasionally the morning sun sparks gold for a minute or so in the pewter sky, and it slants weakly through the village grove where we stand and shiver. There is freshly fallen snow underfoot and on the whiskery trees overhead.

The wind has brushed the white stuff away from the frozen puddle near our feet, and the pine needles, leaves and ice crystals suspended in the ice twinkle and glitter and flash by turns. The chancy meeting of the elements forges a pleasing abstract image, but everything is muted and hazy this morning. The damp cold penetrates right through to the bones.

November finds us perched between Samhain (Hallows) festivities and the frantic scurryings of Yule. Migratory species like loons and herons have been gone for weeks, and only few small flocks of Canada geese remain in local fields. Nights are subzero, and most of the geese have shrugged their wings and flown south.

The landscape always seems empty at this time of the year, a pallid sepia study carpeted with fresh snow and crunchy field grasses, crowned from here to there with skeletal, whiskery trees. It is beautiful for all that. Never mind shopping malls with their towering gift displays and trite holiday carols, this is where it is at.

Here we go again, another long white season in which the doddering scribe/artist wraps up in every warm garment she possesses, slings a camera around her neck, crams her pockets with poo bags and dog biscuits and goes off with her canine companion to plumb the mysteries of winter. When she returns home later, she will move autumn's vibrant images from her computer to an archival DVD, and she will create a new folder called "Winter".