Fragments From Floyd

Field Notes ~ First Snow(Dec 5, 2003)

* The woods across the pasture are dark and snow appears illumined as it falls against the shadowed hillside, falls in perfect parallel, each flake or cluster of quills following its own path and not another as if lowered down, down one by one on gossamer threads. Most distant feathers float suspended and, picking out a single one to follow with the eye, it will take an eternity to sizzle to the ground on its immense journey. One from half the distance falls twice as fast, and tufts of flakes just in front of my face zip past in a terrible hurry.

* Snow falls onto the creases of my parka and does not melt. What had looked through the windows like falling flakes are not flakes but aggregations--light loose thatches of tiny ice needles, linear and sharp-tipped-- loose feathers of filamentous crystal down. There is no sign of a six-sided lacey flake in any of it. The locks fall from my shoulders onto my arms, white against the dark of my coat like hair shorn from the barber's shears, slivers of gray and white, they tumble softly to the ground.

* The true white of snow readjusts my perception of colors that I think I see without it there for comparison. The "white" house, newly painted two years ago, already shows a graying in the paint and a dun dusting from the road that seems so apparent against the snow. How odd the "yellow" dog looks against pure white. His markings become conspicuous-- especially the darker places on his rear legs above the feet, the tip of his tail and ears-- all show red-foxy tones. When he is on the hillside, his darkest parts match the tawny broomsedge that stands bent in the snow on the bank behind the house.

* From the front porch, even over the burble of the creek, falling snow hums just below the threshold of hearing, hisses as it falls like tiny droplets against a hot griddle far off. In snow, sounds become muted and flat just as the details of visual texture are now absent from the forest floor-- snow blind and snow deaf-- a partial dampening of sight and sound that is somehow both comforting and unsettling.

* Walking across the pasture full of snow, with only a slight suspension of disbelief, I can imagine that I am walking along a vast shore of the finest white sand. It blows across the road a fine powder; there is not much difference between a drift of snow and a dune of sand. Dry snow squeaks underfoot like Daytona Beach on Spring Break, and you dare not go out onto either without sunglasses. In the high stepping labored trudge through our field, I might as well be walking back through loose sand to the hotel along the boardwalk on Myrtle Beach. Even though the smell of everything is all wrong, one calling seagull overhead would just about complete the illusion, but I'll not wait for it to come along today in this cold wind.

* The pasture grass, cut once late in the summer, lies matted down, mostly, by wet snow. Spikey tops of bent orchard grass bristle up here and there from the white field and it wears an unshaven and haggard look. The turkey hunt out these green whiskers as they stagger across the field in their loopy forays for food.

Posted by fred1st at December 8, 2003 05:06 AM | TrackBack