Love a white Christmas? A gift of snow

More of nature's seasonal tree decorations

This week’s recording is topped and tailed by those charming goldfinches, a colourful bird whatever the weather.

In case you are wondering, this isn’t my house!

Greetings from the moss.

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas? That softly falling snow that muffles sound and erases our traces. An opportunity to wander childlike, to play? To build and share memories with loved ones?

Let it Snow

Some words, phrases, circle like a dog about to settle. Cats are much more direct: a little kneading, then sleep—circling comes later, the yin and yang of relaxation.

One of these phrases is presence and absence, which periodically crops up in my reading. Each time it is absence that tugs at my sleeve.

I realise I have been concentrating on what the moss contains, and that there is another side to it: the missing; what isn’t there.

Perhaps this is part of the appeal of snow. Beyond wonder, there is the softness of its fall, the muffling, an absence of sound.

The way that it erases our mistakes, as if we might begin again.

Everything is dampened; colour is turned down too.

Perhaps too the draw of place for me is absence: in being present I absent myself.

The photos for this post come from an early Christmas present, snow in the third week of November. In selecting images to share, I find that they all come from two days in particular. Mostly they celebrate the messy trees that at other times we pass by. There is a yin and yang here too: that much as I am drawn to the simplicity of abstraction, the softness of evocation, I cannot resist the neural networks of complex branching.

This week the word tank feels to be running low. In a newly published interview for On Landscape, photographer Eric Busch talks about being inspired by traditional Chinese landscape art and poetry, in particular its concept of presence and absence. That pair of words again. Eric refers to the idea that presence emerges from absence. It now occurs to me that this also applies to self. That to sustain ourselves we need to allow ourselves the occasional spell of absence.

I had it in mind to keep going, to write through the holidays but I’ve decided to take a little break over Christmas and New Year. To give myself some space for creativity to emerge, refreshed.

I hope you have a wonderful—restful??—time over Christmas and New Year.

Emergent sprigs of ling heather (Calluna vulgaris) still hold onto their pink flowers.

Thank you to all of you who visit the moss with me each week.

I greatly appreciated your kind reactions to last week’s letter Trees Bearing Gifts: When Everything Sparkles. Each comment, like and share from you is a gift. Why not forward this email to a friend—send them a visual poem, a moment of calm to enjoy over the festive season?

Until next time,

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Encore:

Away from the tangle of trees, on the moss, the cotton grass and ling do their own bit of swirling into each other.

Leaves of cotton grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) softly embrace the flowers of ling (Calluna vulgaris)

All words and images are copyright © Michela Griffith except where otherwise noted