Friday Ramble - Turning

It's a snowy Friday morning, and there is no Mama Says Om theme to think about, write about or try and find a photo for. In the short term, this is probably going to be just a Friday morning meander of sorts, one containing a few words and/or a photo, collage or brush painting, a work in progress or just completed.

The word "turnings" has been dancing about in my mind this week, and it was cavorting in fine style when I went off to spend a few minutes on my favorite stretch of shoreline a few days ago.

Everything seems to be in motion and turning here. Snow is covering the landscape in a smooth white blanket, rounding and smoothing out the contours of the rocks and hills and hollows of the Lanark Highlands. The river in the gorge is still running freely and making riotous music as it careens out into the lake, but it too is freezing, and there are platters of ice resting against every large rock in the river bed. In the lake, ice has formed along the shoreline, and it is making its way out to the center in great circles and billows and swirls.

There are patterns everywhere one looks, and they all have something to do liquid turnings and transformations. The collage above knits up in its own eccentric way the patterns on offer this week, feathery patterns in the ice forming along the shoreline, icicles suspended from fallen trees along the shore, drops of water freezing on fallen leaves. In the absence of color, the Old Wild Mother (Gaia) has given the north a whole winter world of swirling shapes and patterns, most of them containing shades of blue and all of them beautiful.

Perhaps we can do a theme of our own on Fridays for a while? The word for this week is (obviously) turnings, and it would be interesting to read what the word means to others. If you feel like contributing, write away and feel free to post a link to your own precious thoughts on the subject.