Nothing but Blue-Sky Reflections and Time!

On the way home from errands in town, my husband dropped me off at Mahala Street, and I walked from there through the Barrens to home, for the first time since early November. Things were looking quite different then, with fall foliage colors still in the trees. Now, we are in full-on winter, and most of the trees are bare.

But there are many fun frozen puddles, and they have the art and glee and composition of the fast-frozen kind. Lots of action and energy captured in them, lots of bubbles and shapes and shine. I walked as though one in a daze, stopping often to kneel down and photograph each one. What a show!

In the extras, you may see a picture of a leaf atop a frozen puddle with black "rivers" running through it. The leaf looked as though it were floating on a long river, into time, and that Alan Parsons Project song came to mind: time, flowing like a river. . . .

Two ladies on horseback rode past me at one point, and I stepped off the road to let them by. We stopped to exchange greetings, and admiration for the day, and the blue sky, and the yellow sunshine. "Nice day!" I said, "But what's that ORB up in the sky?" We all sort of gazed upward, blinking, but happily so. Then they were on their way.

My journey concluded with a trip through the ponds. My main photo above is of the third pond. It was featured in a recent blip right after I'd found a tiny animal skull nearby and christened it Skull Pond (which I'm still not sure is right for it; BTW, all of these ponds need NAMES!).

On this day, the pond featured freshly frozen, shiny, slick, clear ice, which was marvelous for reflections. I had blue sky and sunshine and all the time in the world! And my tunes box with me, of course, and a song in my ears, in my heart, and on my lips.

The camera wanted to sing too. And so I played with my settings with a liberal hand, and created the confection above. Is there anything more beautiful on a winter's day than the reflection of a bluebird sky on water, either liquid or frozen? I think not. In fact, I suspect it might be a photographer's life work to try to understand - and depict - light on water. Or to try to learn the true color and shape of water.

I posted the three Mahala photo sets - the woods and frozen puddles, the ladies on their horses, and the third pond shining in blue glory - on my Facebook, and one of my friends came by and put some love on them. She says I have captured "Pacha Mama in her finest winter glow." It turns out Pachamama is an Earth Mother goddess revered by the peoples of the Andes; her shrines are rocks and trees. I'm liking the sound of that!

So please enjoy the reflection shot above of pond number three, in which the Earth Mother Pachamama shines in her winter glory. And the puddle shot in the extras, in which a leaf begins its long journey down a frozen river, to the sea, to the sea.

This place may be called The Barrens, but that name is a lie.  It is not barren at all; no, not even in January. It is a place of celebration for a girl with nothing but a camera, shiny new-ice blue-sky reflections, and rivers of time.

My main soundtrack song is for the image above, and it's Pearl Jam, with Nothing as It Seems. The song for the image in the extras, of the leaf starting its long voyage, is the Alan Parsons Project, with Time.