Winter! Snow! A real winter. That’s perfect.
Where I live, we had a real winter in 2013, with ice, half a meter thick on the lake. Ice that lay far into April.
This year, winter has come late, so the ice may not get so thick. But the snow has lain a couple of weeks now and in recent days there has been another snowfall that has transformed the landscape.
I wanted to see this change and drove out. Parked the car and let my eye drink the clean lines and shapes.
And yes, the lake is frozen.
The snow, the cold, the winter seizes life. It’s delicate and fragile this time of the year, and this aesthetic beauty hides life that is silent and invisible and desperately holds its breath, waiting, seeking. On the surface it is quiet.
This is what I mean by perfection. Later there’ll be rain and thaw. Then life wakes up. Then the cows will trample deep into the wet soil of the meadow. Then the starlings and wagtails will find their food in the torn topsoil. Later the flowers and leaves shall form their chaotic patterns everywhere. But now it’s perfect.
See the soft smoothness along the foot of the hill. That’s perfect.
See the mist on the lake and the ice, as it all hides in haze and rounds off all sharp edges. That’s perfect.
See the meadow’s white sheet spread out and see the shadows that the low afternoon sun draws on the snow.
And see how the contours of trees and branches get so sharp.
That’s perfect.
Soon life comes back. Life, moving and mixing, changing and becoming. Unfathomable, interesting and incomprehensible.
But now it’s perfect.
Ellington