A Singular Snow Day

Last week (before this week's big snowstorm) we had one of those rare days when the atmospheric conditions were just right for the snow to cling to everything it touched: pine boughs, aspen branches, bronze grasses, cabin roofs, fence posts and telephone lines. Instead of obscuring the landscape in a covering of white, it outlined every twig and branch. The icy conditions had the strange effect of making everything clearly delineated while, with moisture condensing in the air, softening the landscape at the same time.

I love these vivid snow days even more because they are transient. As soon as the sun comes out, the snow will melt, and the landscape will return to what’s normal for winter.

I’m not the only one who wished such perfectly formed landscapes would last forever. I just saw an exhibit of Claude Monet’s paintings (at the Denver Art Museum). The French painter preferred working in the open air, even in winter when he had to bundle up to stay warm.

His subjects were bridges, buildings, fishing boats, haystacks and water lilies, but mostly he loved water and sky. Especially he strove to capture the different stages of light on the haystacks or sea, but he was continually frustrated because the atmospheric conditions kept changing. As fast as he painted, he couldn’t keep up. Like the rest of us, one of the world’s favorite Impressionist painters had to deal with impermanence.

Indeed, the next morning after it snowed at the cabin, the sun came out, and there was a small window of time before the crystal landscape lost its glimmer. I stood on the road (below) by the field facing Mount Meeker, which was engulfed in swiftly changing clouds, and admired the pine trees still outlined in white, the dazzling grasses and that deep blue sky, while listening to the steady drip of melting snow.

 

Comments

[shoney]

Beautiful photos and writing.

[Julene Bair]

"Such vivid, beautiful writing and pictures," I came here to say, only to discover it had already been said, above, quite simply because it is true.

[Brent Zeinert]

Monet's artwork is amazing. I was fortunate to see a traveling exhibit of his work at the Art Institute of Chicago back in the 1990s. Great photography on this story. I especially like the tree roots "sculpture" on the grassy field. The snow never really melts the next day in my neck of the woods. The snow will melt sometime in April.