Blending of Day
Usually I set my alarm to go off an hour before sunrise. That gives me time to start a fire, make coffee, and then adventure outside to get photos of all of the colors that alight the land when the sun comes up. I can run back inside to warm my hands at the woodstove, then run outside again to take more pictures. It’s a challenge, because there is a palette of beauty in near 360 degrees, so I run all over trying to capture it all.
The past couple of days I’ve been quite sick, and I was going to just sleep in this morning, comfortable and warm inside a dreamy cocoon of blankets. But I woke a few minutes before sunrise, I didn’t even open the blinds, I just knew there was something beautiful happening outside and that I needed to be quick!
Overnight, a freeze laid over the land, frosty snow, the kind that clings tight to grasses and everything else. It glitters, impossibly, usually very tiny sparks but this time they were big! And this morning it was all pink! There is a lot of magic in this place I’ve found myself and it’s overwhelming so much of the time. I just watch it all, captivated and so inspired that it’s hard to move, which is strange in a lovely way. I try my best to take photos and write about it. I want to paint it, too. Very much so!
Volcano Spirit
The clouds made me think of smoke or steam rising out of a volcano. These mountains are not volcanoes, though they are igneous so perhaps this is what they dream.
Sky Pilot
Morning Mountain
A very underrated igneous mountain that no one seems to photograph but me. What could be better. Last night the rain pounded on the roof for hours. I wrapped up in a thick blanket like a sleeping bag and listened, in and out of sleep, waiting, until the rain turned silent and became gentle snow. Sometimes it feels like it’s just me and this mountain that sticks up out of the prairies, and the ravens that come to wonder what I am. That solitude lets me perfectly imagine climbing onto their wings and disappearing into the fog. I can look at it looming from my window while I write, its clouds and valleys become a strange and cold, indifferent sort of friend. But we both have fire inside of us and perhaps this is the common language we can learn to speak.
I woke up and the sky was still that early. very dark blue. Wind blew off the mountain and straight to me, wrapping me in a damp cold, fresh from its top. Then I took pictures as the sun came up and the colors changed from the velvet of indigo and black to ethereal periwinkle, aquamarine, citrine, and rose quartz pink.
