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A Winter Rose
It is not the dead of winter, but it is the shortest day. Night bleeds into it at both ends, allowing the sun its briefest appearance from its most southerly traverse of the sky. Like the Milky Way that I photograph in early spring when it hugs the horizon, our nearest star scribes so low an arc that even at high noon its light is soft and devoid of warmth. Still, where rays cut through the limbs of a dying fir to paint the ground, I change course to walk through these beams. In them, I feel a summer gone....
Winter's Glow
August seems like more than a long time ago tonight. It hangs deep in my mind, next to childhood memories of summer that resonate with more emotion than detail – feelings that during those extended evenings when chimney swifts and nighthawks carved erratic flight paths through the sky and the Earth radiated warmth below there was unending hope. A sense of carefree joy and ease of life not yet tainted by fall’s first frost or the acrid scent of industrial cleaners used to prep a graded school’s carpet. I take a step, supported for a moment by my snowshoe, then drop...