Saturday, February 27, 2010

winter walk


A couple of weeks ago when I was in Fort Frances, I went for a morning walk along the shores of Rainy Lake. Where the lake empties into the Rainy River, an old Railway bridge (1908) crosses the narrows towards Minnesota, US. I stood on the Canadian side of Couchiching shore looking at the American Koochiching / International Falls to take this photo. I was amazed to see an open patch of water on the lakeside of the old bridge as this is the dead of winter. You can see the between space of liquid water and ice and snow through the puffs of wet air.

I walked through the snow at the disputed Pither's Point. The landscape had been covered in hoar frost during the night and we woke up to a white frost-laden wonderland. Besides 3 ducks that swam in the open expanse of water situated at the narrows, on the lakeside,

I heard two woodpeckers but could not see them.

The sound was coming from here.

If you stood real still at the shoreline you could hear a faint shushing sound of ice crystals sighing. Walking against the sun, narrowing my eyes against its brilliance,

I saw the air was filled with ice crystals, with small points of light dashing diagonally to meet me, and realized the sound was coming from the ice crystals as they set free from the trees.

2 comments:

tasteofbeirut said...

This post was like a poem!
Loved it!
By the way, hope you'll get to come to Lebanon in the summer; if ever in Sidon, it is nice to visit the old part of town with the soap museum and the old khan.

PS: My mom and her two sisters are born story-tellers

northshorewoman said...

thanks for the tip!

I think if all the stories of everyday women in our families were written down, the literature would blow us away!