Posts Tagged ‘impressions’
Predictable
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weather
storms
blue skies
heatwaves
cold spells
heartbreak
success
failure
rodents
reasons
seasons
taxes
deception
distractions
laughter
rain
pain
cracks
copycats
mold
just plain getting old
scandals
thuggery
lessons
loss
solar flares
burns
mud
rust
surprises
excuses
hunger
anger
drama
scams
growth
tears
fears
ripples
an echo
love and death
expectations
incantations
admiration
adulation
repetition
competition
pattern recognition
interruption
consequences
recompense
long waits
missed dates
altered states
final hours
happy endings
giving thanks
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Delicate Impressions
There is a new covering of snow that has created a fresh surface for our forest creatures to make their marks upon. I’ve gotten no better over the years at differentiating the identity of the range of little footprints made by squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, moles, and mice, but I know all of them are out there running around.
It starts with one or two crossing our trails while snow is still falling and by 24 hours later, it looks like everyone is out and about. Yesterday, we found evidence of a feathered friend, or friends, dancing around on the white carpet.
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I love seeing the gentle wisps of wing feathers adding context to visible footwork scribbled in the snow.
While I had my camera out to capture all this art, I spotted a different sort of impression. I love the combination of the shadow of sunlight and the indented snow impression on either side of this dried plant that wind had pressed down.
No pictures were taken during our last walk of the night because it was too dark, but there were plenty of beautiful views we enjoyed as I pulled the trash bin down our driveway to the road.
I wore a headlamp but never turned it on. With the small crescent moon reflecting light onto the white snow-covered ground, there was just enough light that I could navigate my way.
The sky was crystal clear, which explains the space-like below-zero temperatures we are experiencing again. We put blankets back on the horses earlier in the night after giving them a break for a few days. The stars were so bright we almost didn’t need the reflections off the slice of the moon that was visible.
I noticed the horses were standing at the bottom of the slope from the barn, near the gate to the hayfield, as we passed by. As Delilah and I neared the top of the last rise in the driveway before it drops down to the road, my peripheral vision picked up motion to my right.
Turning my head to figure out what it was brought an unexpected startle of the four horses jogging along the fence beside us. We all stopped as I turned my whole body to acknowledge them and exchange greetings. Delilah seemed unimpressed with having company on our trek.
As I resumed pulling the trash bin along the driveway, the four blanketed horses decided to run off in a beautiful semi-moonlit arc off the rise and back down toward the outer perimeter of the paddock fence line.
The delicate impressions of walking the trash to the road always make the chore well worth the effort, even in hazardous wind-chill conditions.
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Several Impressions
A morning walk last Friday with Delilah on a trace coating of overnight snow and Cyndie’s tire tracks provided plenty of enticing opportunities to frame a variety of interesting views. Here are three of my favorite images selected from a much wider range of impressions I collected on that excursion…
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Mad Weather
Using just a couple hours in the dark Tuesday night to plow and shovel the 9 inches of snow we received, left the overall job of cleaning up around here far from complete. I spent yesterday at the day-job again, arriving home with no interest in rushing out again to do the rest of the plowing or shoveling, so plenty of spots remain covered.
The deck ended up with a fascinating snowscape of waves and lines unlike anything I remember seeing before. We have ended up with a variety of interesting patterns over the years, but never one with peaks so tall while the slots between remained wide open.
It must have been the result of a perfect dryness of the flakes and lack of wind while they fell.
The pending challenge which we are very curious to have revealed, is whether the predicted next wave of snow will double what already fell Tuesday, and make our job of clearing paths and trails –and the back deck– even more challenging that it was already going to be.
Last night, Cyndie and I watched a rented sci-fi thriller, “Life” (2017), a movie that depicts a space station crew studying a one-celled life form picked up on Mars that unexpectedly grows into a threatening menace. At one point in the movie, the lead scientist ponders the terrorizing underway by the organism they had named, “Calvin”.
“Calvin doesn’t hate us. But he has to kill us in order to survive.”
While out in the snow last night, under a “downpour” of more freshly falling flakes, I realized I was feeling a similar sense about the multiple blasts of winter weather battering us of late. My mind tends to perceive the storms as having cognition and intentionally pummeling our region with increasing levels of abuse.
But the weather doesn’t hate us. It is just an unemotional result of ingredients playing out on a global scale. Somewhere, a butterfly flapped its wings and we got walloped by winter.
Still, I can’t deny the distinct impression that, even though the weather might not hate us, it’s behaving an awful lot like it’s a little bit mad at us right now.
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I’m Curious
If you read yesterday’s Words on Images post about the simple choice that we make every day, how do you interpret the suggestion about accepting the obvious as the only plausible explanation?
After I wrote those words, with one thought in my mind, I got the impression that it likely implied the opposite of what I was thinking. I considered changing it, but then decided to let it go out into the world, as is, for readers to take from it what they will. We each come to our individual conclusions from a place of preconceived notions and personal perspectives that color our perceptions.
I expect some will align with the version in my head, and some will perceive the opposite.
Let me just say that I believe that there are unknowable possibilities, likely beyond imagining, available as explanation for what we sense and experience in our world, which others choose to miss by constraining their options exclusively to the one they construe as obvious.
I may be wrong.
And that’s the key.
Imagine the possibilities of embracing uncertainty.
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Relative Something 