SImplicity

Last Fall I cut a red dogwood branch and shaped it gently into a spiral shape. It was held in place with thread (it looked a bit like a spider's web but not nearly so neat and tidy) to dry out and hopefully hold the shape once dry.

I didn't really know what I was going to do with it, but I knew the day would come when I'd find some fun way to work with it. Fast forward several months. Now, with a forecast of RAIN (yuck) coming I knew all the lovely snow in the fields would be gone soon, or at least altered severely and there was not enough time left in the day to make a sculpture in the usual ways. So, feeling impulsive I took down the twig from my living room ceiling hook and removed all the thread. It worked. The branch now held the shape beautifully all on its own.
I grabbed camera and skis and spiral and headed out into the golden afternoon light. Trails of tracks were everywhere. When I was young and my dad and I would go out skiing, he'd say "Let's go read the news" and we'd go find and follow the trails and tracks left by our woodland neighbors. So on this day I was again "reading the news" and found many great stories written in the snow. Eventually it was time to get serious and take some photos of the spiral and I had fun trying it out in several different locations. I'll share a few of the better variations in the next few days. The tracks in this photo were made by a very large coyote. We have one in this area that is huge and sounds like a wolf when he sings... perhaps he made this trail trotting off into the sunset on a previous day. I loved how the shadow played with the twinkling snow crystals... they did not come out in the photo so well, but there were all the colours of the rainbow glittering in the snows. Like precious jewels, which they were to me because the rain will take them and turn them into something else when it arrives.