Slow Falling
Shifting snow; a play with words
The week has by turns been mild - briefly, did I dream this? - very cold and very white as snow arrived on the north wind. It’s hard to say how much has fallen, such has been the drifting. As I write this our forecast high today is due to be -3°C, feeling like -10°C in the wind. I’m waiting for soup at midday before I venture out. But I will.
A Week Mostly White
Thursday. The lines between cloud and mist are frayed. Moisture from the ground mingles with droplets in the air. Mizzle. I’m walking seemingly wrapped in vapour. Ice lingers in puddles and ponds but after a milder night I can step out with confidence, my footsteps again a soft and wet accompaniment.
The breeze seems restless, indecisive, at first pushing at my skin from the south, cold with Cairngorm air. Later, carrying damp from the north-west.
As I return home, the veil finally lifts to a clearing sky and the promise of a cold night. And then just as quickly, it drops again, promise withheld if not withdrawn.
Friday. The cold damp has persisted. The view from the house is misleading, the air is bone chilling as I walk through the wood. The frost lingers and the sun remains hidden; I’m slow to warm to the idea of photographing this place but there are still small beauties to notice: ice and all that it envelops, tangled branches and trees in misty mood, soft colours. The clearing waits until an hour before dusk when the sky and land is again reavealed; it will be another cold night.
Saturday. I can still feel yesterday’s cold in the ache of my ribs. Breakfast sees salmon clouds and nebular glow. On our walk branches and leaves stir in anticipation of the coming wind.
Sunday. Snow arrives sideways. The morning is a whirl of white. Sun draws me out in the afternoon to meet further falls. I share the shelter of the wood with the roe deer.
Monday. New snow scenes are collaged onto dark windows. Through morning snow falls, drifts and spins, continually reshaping a bleached world. Birds fed, I pass through the wood and follow the drive. For a moment I’m back in autumn, watching pale leaves drift into the dried field cover crop; large numbers of redwings drop down from the trees as softly as the snow.
Tuesday. Clear blue sky and pink hills fade into a flat white day, matching mood. Snow falling. The day stays muted and the snow is being adulterated; how quickly we tarnish nature’s magic in our rush to travel.
Wednesday. The sunlight makes me a little more eloquent as I walk. Everything seems intense today: the cold, the wind, the light. Bright, brutal, beautiful. It’s never felt busier here: so many tracks - human, machine, animal, bird. The frantic scratching, scrambling, scrabbling and pecking in the search for food while we blindly drive on.
Each step disturbs powder, a fine puff of snow. The fields are in places stripped bare and upturned boats of drifted snow push through the fence, beached across the track. The analogy is reinforced by the way that the snow feels underfoot, slipping and sliding softly like sand, and the way that it wraps itself around everything, soft contours that make me think more of dunes than drifts. The rushes at times pass for marram.
Rejoining the lane the illusion is complete. Today this rolling land is fluid too, bewitching to watch, tricky for travel. There has been no thaw and the air has been too dry to cap the snow with ice. I walk at times enveloped in wind blown powder, which despite appearances is wet to the touch. Cold steam. Even the lines taken by the crystals/droplets are fluid, snaking across the field. I shouldn’t really be surprised; so much of the fine tracery etched in the snow records this movement.
Thursday. More snow has fallen overnight, the depth obscured by drifting. Dawn is cold and clear but by 9am the sky has filled with soft pink cloud and the snow has begun again.
The stories told: playing with the typology of snow
On Tuesday, when both light and day felt flat, I thought to play around with my walking words nudged on by the angle of the snow. Two days later, it isn’t perfect, but what the heck… It’s a start. You can loose hours playing with words, and the snow won’t last forever.
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Your photography and words have a beautiful cadence, a softly tripping song. Mizzle ... now there is a word my gran told me for that state of water saturation. She learned it from her Scottish gran and so we pass it on. I do enjoy your Substack.
Very poetic and beautiful photo.