Winter dream

For a season that offers stunning reality checks, the idea of a dreamlike view of this season of ice and snow seems to go counter to the sharp lines and absolutes continually handed down by the season we call winter. Temperatures that are measured in negative numbers are not only inconvenient, they are deadly. We cower in heated cocoons only one power outage away from disaster. A layer of ice on the landscape (and roadscape) convinces us that our world, with all of its important meetings and critical pieces of business, can wait for a day or so. A blizzard brings life to a virtual standstill. We are seldom so often reminded that we are so not the boss of us as we are in winter.

Yet we do dream. We romanticize the harsh cruelty of winter. Perhaps because even in that harshness lies a primitive beauty that calls to us to take a closer look at what God hath wrought. Amazing things happen when you strip life down to its barest essentials, and winter has the power to do that.

Photograph © 2007 James Jordan.