First Snowfall

I had been girding up for another Michigan winter with a mix of resignation and dread, but those feelings have taken an abrupt change. Yesterday I forayed out into the countryside with my camera to capture the season’s first layer of snow, and I returned a convert to winter photography.

Three seasons of the year offer the colors and fullness of growth—the newness of spring, the exuberance of summer, the flamboyance of autumn. Winter strips all of that away, and reveals instead the fascinating geometry of nature. Minus their leaves, trees and shrubs weave linear wickerworks with their branches. The surface of the snow, with its subtle dips and peaks, is a canvas of white and blue shadow in the slanting afternoon sun. And the sky—well, this morning it is a drizzle of snow drifting out of an ambient whiteness; but yesterday it was an immense drama, a spectacle of huge, sculpted clouds drifting through resplendent blueness; of dancing snowflakes, gleaming crepuscular rays, and the creamy curtains of distant snow showers glowing in the sun.

This is my first year with my new camera. I have a lot to learn, but I’ve also learned a lot. I’ve always had a pretty good eye for the natural world—an artist’s eye, I daresay. But the camera is building on that and improving it. Now it is teaching me to see winter in a new way. This much I discovered just yesterday: that a snowy landscape is a grand landscape, filled with interest; and also, conversely, that there is much to be seen up close.

At the corner of two country roads, I parked my car to explore the possibilities of a weatherbeaten old homestead standing forlornly on a wooded hilltop. I snapped several photos, then headed back to my car, only to be stopped short by an ancient, tumbled-down outbuilding whose latticework of old lumber pretty much demanded attention. But what to use for a frame? Ah—those cattails in the foreground! The cattails themselves soon became my focus. My perspective was shifting from the far-away to the near, from long landscapes to intimate details.

Later, at the top of a hill, I stood looking down into a farm valley, watching snow devils whirl across the white hillsides. This view is one of my favorite in Barry County, and yesterday, in the light of the fading day, it was sublime.

Beauty and wonder lie at our doorstep. They are woven into the natural environment of Michigan, but they are also a matter of attitude. They are not merely the product of our surroundings, but of ourselves and what we make of our surroundings. I had initially bought my camera for the purpose of storm chasing, but it has refused to be confined. It insists on broadening my horizons. It is even helping me to rediscover the beauty of winter—the sharp linearity of leafless landscapes and the textures of the snow.

The snow is falling now outside my window, large flakes descending silently on a black-and-white world. Today’s perspective is different from yesterday’s. But something inside me has changed. Maybe by the time March arrives, I won’t be quite so intrigued by the snow, but I’m content to live in the moment, pondering–and even captivated by–the possibilities that winter brings.