January 007 Snap a dozen Days

I have just joined Stephanie and Margene's newest brainstorm 007 Snap a Dozen Days. What a marvelous idea they have. Each of us shoots a photo , that represents that month, and then writes about what it means to them. Please join me now for:

January in the Pacific Northwest

The bleak mid-winter has settled over the Pacific Northwest – rather like a blanket of wet that shrouds the normally rich green foliage of the trees. We have been stripped bare of all we normally hide behind –left to show our bones to the sky.

The trees; maples, alders and birch, that normally hold their canopies of leaves enfolding each other’s limbs, are now standing solitary against the backdrop of endless grey. The wind blows through them, rain pummels their branches and trunks – leaving nothing untouched by the wet.

I often feel like this in winter – devoid of the rich greenery that hides my limbs. I am exposed, chilled by the soggy damp of the rain – yet beautiful in all my solitude. We stand alone mid-winter, yet surrounded by the beautiful solitude of others like us. Each vulnerable and singular in the cold. Winter is the time of setting our roots deep, and dreaming of spring.

Is this snow, you wonder as you drive briskly past in your car? No, indeed not. The subtle life that wraps each tree is delicate moss lichen, epiphytes to be exact; a non-harmful plant that is supported by the host tree, exposed to our view during the winter.

Beautiful unto itself, and normally hidden from view, it creates an eerie green light in the defoliated forest.

Life under life – this is winter in the northwest. Winter exposes us – strips us bare of our outer trappings, and exposes beauty that is normally hidden.