It has been ten days since my last field note. The landscape near my home in Northwest Montana had so many variations over that period of time. As I skied along an irrigation ditch (above) with my camera I experienced the daily transitions.
The snow melted out of the trees a couple days after the last storm.
During the last week we had a period of cooler weather. Nothing like parts of the country recently effected by the polar vortex but enough to freeze and create some ice lines and surfaces reflecting the sky, snow and trees.
The temperature is warming up again and a couple days ago the snow, sunlight and dried summer plants reflected in the slowly moving water brought together layered upside versions of the hillside along the irrigation ditch where I was skiing.
The combination of the light and shadows in the snow reflected in the water brought a strange compelling depth and dimension to the flat wet surfaces. I felt a sensation of falling into the images—a falling into another world right next to this one. Tonight that feeling made me seek out a poem by Jane Kenyon and the line in her poem Things—”Into light all things must fall” — and somehow those words feel true —for a moment.
