Lulling Us

Into a false sense of spring....

The sun tracks the tiniest of fractions higher in the sky each day. Although it’s still low enough at daybreak and in evening that there is nearly equal light on all horizons, you can see the changes in shadow and shine.

New warmth is swiftly perceptible, a welcome hint of joy on winter-wind-chilled faces and hands. It is good to stand, sheltered from the wind, to just enjoy it now and then.

The snow can feel its subtle pressure too.

On days when the wind is right, a nubbin of the white stuff will break off the shale cliffs to the west of the farm house. Then another and another, until a fine storm of natural snowballs flows down the steep face, each gathering rosebuds as it may.

Or rather gathering more and more snow, until the ditch at the bottom is littered with them... Imperfect nautiluses, ephemeral as spring.

Snow rollers we call them. I love to see them, although it is nearly impossible to stop to photograph them, what with the wild and woolly traffic on our little road these days.

Then as they melt away and the snow covering the cliffs does too, the bright blue ice below shows its colors. Each year sheets of ice emerge from broken rock faces, along many nearby roads. sometimes it is white, or dirty brown, but here and there it shows sky blue, turquoise, or greenish-blue, in a sort of weird and lovely road art.

I wonder when the next storm will come.....