A Tangle of Bright Moments: An Impossible Possession

“I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I cannot appropriate the snow field where I slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession.” — Simone de Beauvoir, from The Ethics of Ambiguity (1948)

*

Spouse and I explored a trail we’d never walked (or snowshoed) before, on the second day of February this year (high 30F, low -14F). We got a bit lost, as we have the other time or two we’ve walked it since, but that’s part of the fun, sometimes.

On this particular day, I was apparently noticing patterns — in snow, on trees, made with rocks.

animaltrackssnowMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
animal tracks in snow
snowpatternswhiteMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
snow patterns
birchtreebarkpurpleorangebruiseMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
birch bark looking bruised
colourfulredtreebarksbirchMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
colourful red birch bark
stripedmaplegreenbarkMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
striped maple tree (Acer pensylvanicum) bark
beechtreetrunkmarkingscarvingsMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
beech tree with markings … a tear flowing from an eye, or something else perhaps …
rockcairnsnowbMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019
one of quite a few rock cairns

This red oak has held onto its leaves, as oaks (and beeches) sometimes do through winter.

snowoaktreesdriedleavesstonebenchMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019

Pink lichen on tree bark.

pinklichentreebarkabstractartsyMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019

Some shots of the trail.

sunseedheadsweedsdriedsnowMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019trailbridgeweaksunlightsnowMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019

snowundulationsmoundsmeringueMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019

Distant view of mountains, and a sports field close by.

snowbaretreesmountainsdistancelandscapeMorrisTrailCSCNLNH2Feb2019

*

Featured image: trail marker.
This is one in a series of posts revisiting field trips taken from January to June 2019, as described here.

One comment

Leave a Reply