Dawn broke this day upon what I have come to think of as “new winter” here: deep cold dancing with low-lying bands of fog, simultaneous snowfall of the sort of flakes more associated with spring, and an extraordinary mix of clouds and light.
The wild birds apparently agree, since we have both winter birds and spring birds, from the winter jays and juncoes, the woodpeckers and chickadees, to the middle-spring grosbeaks and the goldfinches and young red-wings who arrive just at the threshold of summer. And while it’s not quite the unseasonal winter rainbow in this shot Wings captured on a cold and snowy day just shy of two full years ago, the light has been a riotous thing, chaotic and capricious and always, always beautiful.
A day or two ago, we did have a rainbow of sorts for a moment or three, or perhaps more accurately, a sherd of one: a sundog, all dancing iridescence in the high southwest sky. It was here only momentarily, but the shimmering, pearlescent clouds that held it so briefly remained throughout the day.
Time was in this place that rainbows were strictly a summer phenomenon. Now, though, summer overlaps with fall, fall trades time and space with winter, and winter and spring seem to begin their own dance with the December solstice anymore. We have had buds on the aspens for weeks, catkins already open like tiny bouquets of white velvet.
On this day, it was impossible to tell the velvet from the snow.
In theory, there will be more snow tonight, and tomorrow, too: a 75% chance tonight; 70% tomorrow, the forecast still insists. But the fog has returned to the mountain slopes, lying low and clinging to the sides of the peaks, its bands transcended now by a winter moon not quite full and riding high and cold in the southeast sky, even as the western horizon still holds the rich rose afterglow of Father Sun’s descent.
Seen through the prism of winter, our small world glows even in the dark hours now.
Looking out upon the world now is in fact a bit like looking at a snow globe, albeit from the inside. This snow was heavy and wet, only a few degrees warmer, and it would have been rain. It has a muffling effect on the ordinary sounds of distant traffic and the other noise of human habitation, making it almost possible to believe that we are alone here: just us, the animals, the snow, and the light.
Then a horn or a siren or a jake brake of a semi speeding around the highway’s curve intrudes, and the spell is broken, but until then? Storm and light have given us a new view of our world, showing it fresh and clean and untouched, a place of solitude and grace and beauty. Such is the magic of Mother Earth’s lenses, cut by the wind and beveled by the burr of ice, refracting the light through the prism of winter.
Perhaps we shall have a rainbow yet tomorrow.
~ Aji
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