Nature’s at it again with a fanciful display of hoar frost…how appropriate to usher in the (recent) official start of winter!
Category: Poetry
Haiku: Farm “Fossils”
So maybe they’re not technically fossils yet, but the descendants of the dinosaurs clearly left their prints in what, the preceding evening, had been soft mud. Aged a few thousand years, they might become an exciting find for some future paleontologist.
Haiku: Softened Edges
It snowed yesterday. Just a dusting – but for a while, the sodden landscape was transformed into something peacefully beautiful. To me, snow is one of those arguably ordinary events that is rarely fully appreciated: what other natural occurrence can transform unappealing objects, like rusty old gates, into something worth capturing? When it snows, really snows, the world’s frenetic pace slows and it grows quiet, as if there’s a reverent hush. Watching the snow is a bit hypnotic, too – as it swirls gracefully to the ground, it’s easy to engage in a bit of reverie: snowball fights, patiently rolling big snowballs to make a snowman, dogs cavorting in the snow…cherished snow memories.
May the wonder of snow be with you this holiday season!
Haiku: Tidal Pull
Watching the motion of waves has always been meditative for me, soothing and comforting. Is it because I’m a water sign? Perhaps…or perhaps it’s some faint memory of being in utero. Regardless, I could sit and stare at the water all day, thinking deep thoughts and wondering about the life in that environment, a world inhospitable to me but perfectly suited to them. Are there really two worlds, one on land and one in the sea?
Thinking about ocean life means thinking about how humans have impacted the denizens of the waterworld, like the fact that there are estimated to only be around 400 North Atlantic right whales alive now. Having been hunted to the brink of extinction in the beginning of the 20th century, banning the hunting of this species allowed their numbers to very slowly recover…until this last decade, which saw unusually high mortality, attributed primarily to human causes (ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear).
On this trajectory, one day, there may be no more North Atlantic right whales. And the planet will be poorer for it.
Read more about the plight of the North Atlantic right whales here.
Haiku: Fashionable Frost
Everyday beauty: in this case, requiring that the viewer be present at the right time – a few hours later, and the leaf’s icy edging melts in the warmth of the sun. As if it had never happened.
Haiku: A Frore Shore
The unseasonably frigid weather has presented great opportunities to observe and capture photos of uniquely brumal scenes like this one. The scintillating crystals of ice seem like living creatures, growing, even suggesting movement when out of the viewer’s direct line of sight. Who could tire of such natural and pristine beauty? And what other substance could make mud look this good? 😉