Thursday, February 7, 2019

A winter's reprieve


A thirty pound backpack filled with painting gear, ice cleats strapped to my boots, I am outside.  The latest polar vortex of minus 20 degrees has finally been diminished by a warm front. No longer hunkered down in my tiny house, but in Nature's open air arena at Maudslay State Park.  It was 48 degrees outside. Warm.  I inhaled deeply, my lungs open freely and began my painter's walk from the parking lot.

I made my way down the sledding hill, rounding at the base to a partially melted pond. A brilliant sun cast elongated shadows on icy patches of left over snow on the wooded hillside: A plank was positioned over a burbling snow melt stream to an icy path that divided the pond into two parts.  There I stood, eyeing both sides of the pond. 

I painted the left side where I spied animal prints dimpling the snow bank. 

Is that a woodpecker's rat-a-tat I hear in the distance?