Friday Ramble - Dazzled at Sundown

Falling snow, then rain and freezing rain, then snow again... At sunset, the world is rendered in dusky blues and taupes with flashes of deep red, burgundy and stormy purple. The setting sun is so bright it hurts the eyes. Sketches and paintings executed in such light look like photos; photos captured in the same light look like sketches and paintings.  One could be standing almost anywhere, but whoever she is, and wherever she happens to be, she is dancing in liminal light, and she knows it.

What is odd on our winter rambles, pleasing and enchanting too, are the elements that don't invite a thoughtful glance at other times and in other seasons: fence posts leaning their way along the hill and wandering away into the distance, the cedar they are made of, its lichens, weathered texture and dry fragrance. Furrows in the enclosed fields are as hard as iron under our boots.  Dried mulleins, milkweeds and grasses blow to and fro in the north wind, and they crackle in their oscillation.

Bare trees along the trail into the deep woods arch overhead and flash silver as we trudge into the forest with toboggans to fill wild bird feeders and leave apples for the deer. Sometimes the frozen trees and their dangling icicles ring like bells; at other times, they clatter like cymbals as we go along.

Something wonderful is present and waiting patiently to be known, but whatever that something is, it has yet to reveal itself in the dazzling sundown light. Perhaps the truth is that we simply don't have the eyes to see it or the wits to comprehend what is right in front of us and being held out in offering.

Standing here at sunset, we are all wrapped up in wonder, marveling at the falling sun, the noctilucent clouds and sky overhead, the earth under our wandering feet, everything around us. It is bitterly cold and windy on the trailing edges of a winter day, but the feelings of delight prevail, and they go right to our hearts and lungs, our blood and bones.  Everything is real, and everything is connected, and everything is plain old absolutely gorgeous.  Wow...