Winter Field

by Kathy Bassett

Title

Winter Field

Artist

Kathy Bassett

Medium

Photograph - Photography - Digital Fine Art

Description

An early morning hike along a well used path in an urban area, the morning chill and quiet after a long night of snow feels comforting and familiar. I enjoyed taking pictures and relishing the views. A flock of junkos came overhead and tickled the snow down upon my head. We know each other as they are a return flock that stay close to our home up the way. Winter's gifts.
One gift is beauty. I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow. Another gift is the reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things.

But, for me, winter has an even greater gift to give. It is the gift of utter clarity. In winter, one can… see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground that they are rooted in. Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to see the very ground of our being.
Our inward winters take many forms – failure, betrayal, depression, death. But every one of them, in my experience, yields to the same advice: “The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.” Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives.
But when we walk directly into them, we can learn what they have to teach us. Then, we discover once again that the cycle of the seasons is trustworthy and life giving, even in the most dismaying season of all. Parker Palmer

Uploaded

November 30th, 2022

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