The Zen of Snow

It is, just what it is. In the beginning, we are glad to see it, but by February, we are weary of it, and we are ready to see it pass away.

Winter stays around here for several months out of the calendar year, bitter cold making us dance in place to stay warm while out of doors, snow falling and rolling endlessly away from our windows and lenses toward the horizon in great undulating drifts. The long white season mutes skies by day and conceals the moon and stars by night. It wraps village and woodland alike, rounding with equal tenderness and reciprocity, the contours of houses, streets, vehicles, hillsides and sleeping trees.

Rather than trying to tune out all the white stuff this year, I photograph it patiently, playing with the light and looking for the essence of winter - now and then, I encounter that essence in unlikely places.

For just a moment, snow, old wood and desiccated grasses take on the elements of a painting, perhaps one of Andrew Wyeth's exquisite winter scenes, and what I see in the viewfinder leaves me breathless. As mundane as such compositions always seem to be at first glance, they hold the whole world in their delicate shadings and curves, graceful acknowledgments of the suchness of all things.