By the Winter River

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

Cattails, sedges and spiky wetland grasses fringe the waterway all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and withered, dessicated 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, snow 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, I remembered how the waterway sang jubilantly in the spring as it thawed, how it murmured softly against the shore on hot summer days. I remembered loons calling across the water in early morning and the last herons of autumn standing motionless in the reeds as the sun went down behind the trees on the other side. I thought of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, "Speak Memory". On another day, that might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

The world around me is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth am I going to fit sky, river, tempest and dancing snow into one 5x7 image? The sensible thing to do might be to stand here quietly committing the scene to memory and take no photos at all, but I have never been sensible.