Winter Musics Large and Small

One of those fine, sunny and blue winter mornings which seldom makes an appearance in late December, and is always accompanied by deep cold and wind.

The river is cloaked in mist and doing its very best to freeze over - even in places where the currents are strong, unruly and reluctant to give way to winter.  In places the ice forms abstract paintings in lustrous palettes and flowing shapes, thin sunlight washing over everything in shades of pallid gold and ghostly silver.

It has been cold enough in the last day or two that at times we are sometimes unable to break through the ice crust when walking along deer trails in Lanark - crunchy going all the way. The forest is a noisy place to be in such weather, a wide and treacherous realm of breaking glass in which sturdy boots and protective head gear are imperative.

A bitter wind goes dancing among the ice-coated trees, and it creates a veritable symphony as it goes along. The instruments are organic, and the principal notes are tinkles and chimes, rattles and creaks, groans and falling ice. Mama Gaia (the Old Wild Mother) is the original scribe and maker, the primal composer of music cosmic, refulgent and terrestrial.

This morning, a small cameo appearance from the doddering scribe/photographer, (me). . . . Near the end of one calendar year and the beginning of another, there is something reckless, daring and rather appealing about the idea of showing up here in person, but as just a patch of strong blue shadow in my favorite landscape, an antiquated abstraction in which no visual details of the gnarly old metabolism are revealed.