The way ice grows in Goose Creek fascinates me, and I’m sorry I haven’t chronicled the process over the past month. Still, where we live gets too much southern exposure. It isn’t nearly as good an ice garden as down the road a mile or so where the perpetual shade of the hills spawns crop after crop of ice every night. And I’d have missed the opportunity to show you three shots from yesterday if I hadn’t agreed to carry one of Ann’s care …
My hope was to get to the back of the valley (the “Nameless Creek Gorge” I call it) before the sun disappeared behind the steep west ridge. I didn’t make it in time. By the time I reached my destination at 3:00, the lighting along the creek was already flat shadow. But walking back home–sad to have waited too long to get the shot I had in mind–I turned around and saw this dazzling last light behind me, a single shaft reaching the valley …
After it first falls, thick and smooth, deep enough to cover gravel and ground and all traces of autumn, I go out hesitantly into the new snow and leave the first blemishes in the unbroken white. In the beginning, there are just the boot tracks to the woodpile and the signs of the dog’s quick trips out and back. For a time during the storm, these trampings will fill with the sediments of the next wave of snow, leaving smooth undulations in the surface. …
I rushed frantically to reach the high clearing for a shot of the late afternoon light through a blue fog that lift out of the valley. That, I thought, was my reason to be there. With great purpose and focus, I rushed from my car at a favorite Parkway overlook, and while stumbling through the windswept forest with tripod and camera bag headed toward the open pasture views of a fog-pale distant landscape, I was struck by the beauty of the autumn woods that …