Friday Ramble - Little Blue

Weary of deep snow and icy cold, we (Beau and I) are a little tired of the color blue at times too, no matter how intensely blue the sky, shadows, snowdrifts,spruce trees or the cast iron crane standing out on the deck. Its migratory kin have been gone for months now, but our splendid metal bird is frozen in place, and it is well and truly stuck out there until springtime rolls around again. We like seeing it when we pull the draperies open in the morning.

There are some lovely words for blue in the English language: azure, beryl, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, lapis lazuli, royal, sapphire, turquoise, ultramarine, to name just a few. I recite them like a litany under my breath as I look out at our sleeping garden with mug in hand or break a trail into the woods.

Just when one is all wintered out and decides not to sketch another icicle or frame another photo of such things, another eloquent winter composition presents itself to the eye. Something curved or fragile or delicately robed in snow shows up and begs rapt and focused attention. Glossy bubbles dance in the icicles above a frozen creek in the Lanark highlands. Snow crystals adorn the evergreens overhead and make them blaze like diamonds. As Beau and I wander along, the last faded and tattered oak leaves from last autumn flutter down to lie on the trail at our feet. Pine and spruce cones cast vivid blue shadows in pools of early morning sunlight. Is there anything on the planet as fine as the scent of snowy spruce boughs in late January? Look closely, and every needle is wearing stars.

Small and perfect, complete within itself, each entity conveys an elemental serenity and equilibrium, lowers the blood pressure and stills the breathing, returns eyes and focus to simplicity and grace and just plain old being here. Beau looks up at me, grinning and wagging his tail, and for a minute or two, my doldrums take a step backward. These scraps of time on the edge of the woods will have to be enough, and they are. They are more than enough.

There are worlds great and small everywhere, worlds within and worlds without. Each and every one is a wonder to behold, to remember with my eyes and patient recording lens. Surely, I can do this for a little while longer.