Friday Ramble - By the River

The north wind lightly brushes ice on the river, and clouds of displaced crystals swirl through the air like confetti. Light flickers through nearby trees and everything sparkles: river, ice, whiskery branches and frozen weeds along the shore. The scene is uplifting for a crotchety human in December's middling pages. She longs for light, and the sunshine is a shawl across her shoulders as it comes and goes through the clouds and the mist over the river—it's like honey in her cup.

Cattails, sedges and wetland grasses fringe the tributary all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and their withered, desiccated stalks swaying in the wind. The plumes and spikes outlined against the sky are pleasing when one can actually see them, their artfully curling tops eloquent of something wild and elemental and engaging. So too are the frosted fields, fences and trees on the far shore, the cobalt hues of hoarfrost and ice, the golden setting sun painting the river, the diaphanous veil of cold vapor floating above everything.

There are no caroling birds by the river now, and there is silence for the most part, but this week, she remembered the river singing in its exuberant springtime flowing, last summer's great herons standing motionless in the reeds, loons calling to each other across the water at sundown. She remembers how the setting sun's burnished light painted the hills and trees on the far shore as it slowly tumbled from view. She thought of Vladimir Nabokov's elegant memoir, "Speak Memory". That might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of this most peculiar (so far anyway) winter.

The world around her is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth is she going to fit sky, tempest and dancing ice crystals into one 5x7 image?