Beneath a Snow Sky

The clouds might bring snow to us or somewhere nearby at any time, or hold their peace.  In this kind of mist filled light everything looks a bit bluish.  The camera reveals tales of light that your eye can explain away.  I like bluish days and walking under a might-be-snow sky is familiar to me.   Our walk in the woods is welcome on all fronts--it has been a long time since I have walked on my own let alone with my walking mentor and pal and we are going exploring in a little patch of woods under a comprehensible winter sky. I get to become a child again. Each snow-crunching step builds the pleasure of it all.

The flagstones are relics of a fence from an earlier time.  In my mind they are a vestige of human contrivance as we move into the wildness of the tree domain.  Although these are trees planted in rows rather than having chosen this site themselves, nonetheless, they have grown wild left on their own--not a savage wildness, just a private community.  We are welcome enough as long as we understand that we are visitors in someone else's world.

The birds make their presence felt just on the edge of sight and sound as we move into the depth of trees: a flutter of wings, a swoop across the path ahead of us. When we emerge from the cover of trees to walk along a farm road, a crow comes out of the empty sky dutifully, conspicuously flying overhead calling out a warning.

While we are being watched, we are doing our own looking.  Although we have come exploring for a particular thing, we content ourselves along the way with a thousand million treasures of a winter day in the woods beneath a snow sky.

Simple Pleasures

It is another grey, mizzly, drizzly day.  The last full day of the holidays--a kind of time between time.  It is a miserable day, my husband said.  I prefer to think of it as a day for inside chores--and faster than you could say neurolinguistic programming, I was cheerfully pottering with things that had begun to accumulate as chores, with all the weight that chores bring with them.

Re-hemming a pair of trousers washed on too warm a setting with a bit of lovely Christmas ribbon makes me feel all eco friendly and Christmasy at the same time and hopefully in days to come.

I doubt if the spirit of pottering cheerfully will last through my entire chore stash, but each step lightens the load.