Worth a Thousand Words: February Snow #1

I took a half hour yesterday early morning for myself–meaning I left the pup at home–and carried my cameras (Nikon D200 and the iPhone) with me to watch the sun lift over the ridges and let the one chicken out in her pen.

There is something special about the first morning after a good snowfall. The silence is remarkably different, deeper, softer even than our usual quiet mornings. The comings and goings of every creature is recorded: titmice foraging under the tarp over the chicken pen for stray seeds; field mice dancing dizzily over the surface of a soft snow leaving their tiny paw prints, runiform in the surface; and deep-pressed deer hooves along paths that make one think they know where they want to go and find the straightest path to get there.

But it is the light that marks the chief difference on a snowy morning, with blinding radiance from the very land itself, as if light were coming out of the soil.

In this image, the golden light of sunrise illuminates the snow-covered pines, while the creek bed and roadway are still in more somber shadows. You can see our high-tech foot bridge we put down for visitors; we always have on our rubber boots so don’t really need the board, since the water is rarely higher than the tops of our boots. Click for larger image.