snowlights

some difficulty in cultivating intimacy with the season. usually this summit town is buffeted by winds, blowing cornices, duvets of snow, manic tearing clouds and split and drifting light. but this is the driest winter on record. the sky remains obstinately clear, brilliant and unchangingly blue. very little change in light strobes the town during the day. somehow numbers tick and move on the clock, but, as was mentioned to me by someone very clever, who can say what happens to time during all of this? and so, in an awkward and unusual way, a great effort has gone in to walking the land, cataloging the light and weather (albeit minute) change to find delight in the passing of winter. the stormless season has at least bred vast and brutally hard fields and banks of ice where old snow melts and then galvanizes the landscape. delight from small folks has been eked out in the wake of ice. though we are not, as a rule, a town of many skaters, we can be persuaded to slide and tumble across bare ice when we find it.

 

 but mostly what has been necessary is learning to hone in a taste for kinds of light. when the sun is relentless and flat, making precious those fleeting moments of weak and bent light is the key to being present with winter.

 

 

by grace or pity we were gifted a very light snowfall, every nose in town pressed against the glass, breath hold, hoping it would hold out. come on snow!