Surely this qualifies? My oldest daughter taken in 2012 when she was a bit short of 8 years old:
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Andy, I love your photos. Do you have another boat for some variety?
Have six, but I love this boat.
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Betwixt a hush of white field flanks,
and glimmer crystal iced-twig banks,
I find the warmth within cold flow,
to float in thought urged there to go.
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Thanks for these images PJC. For me, like many others, there’s just a certain draw to them, I guess as if a river (or creek, stream) cuts open the starkness that is winter, to layer back its peace and tranquility more openly for the eye to appreciate. Sometimes, even the water’s thread is not needed, for there are other cues in sight, sound and feeling to reveal such. Robert Frost’s harness bell shake on easy wind, Lampman’s dog barking to cattle. Then (per Archibald Lampman;s Snow):
The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream.
Of course, then we might be standing there with Kim in Maine, staring at 5 new feet of drift over our driveway, a sheer-pin short and puny shovel in hand, thinking, “I’m too old for this shhtuff. I wanna go to Key West!”
And thanks to all for sharing your photos!
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And thank you for your poetry. I’m sure no poet myself but appreciate it, perhaps especially as winter sets in.
Years ago now, I used to be a snowmaker at a local ski hill. Did that for four years, 10PM to 10:30 AM, every night for 100 days straight (unless it was above 26 deg.) And often enough on those winter nights, hiking through the winter woods under Orion’s watchful eye, from snow machine to snow machine, This poem would occasionally pop into my head.
The Snow Man
BY WALLACE STEVENS
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
I wish I could have put a red Mad River Flashback in those shots for a dash of color, but I shoveled a lot and the day was growing short by the time I got down to the creek. And, lacking a shuttle, I haven’t yet tried a three mile hike through woods, path, and along RR tracks in my dry suit… That’s going to have to wait for another day.
Sure do like seeing those sunny Florida shots (shall we sing a verse of Simon’s “Kodachrome”?) though.
And I’m glad we don’t have 4’ drifts to deal with - not today anyhow.
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What a great poem from the Ice Cream Emperor! Thanks.
Flashback? Now my spine curdles in freezer shock, for one sticky pebble scratching at belly of such a skittish pony would surely “turn” this kneeling noodler into the Emperor of I Scream!
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The skittish pony anxiously awaiting a run down that same creek on a milder day. Its the only run I have near me that I can do without a shuttle.
I’ve taken her down there several dozen times this year without so much as a gunnal grab. Bet I can do it again. Though I’ve done it a couple times, the Prospector is really a bit too wide to fit between rocks on the half dozen or so little chutes on that stretch. And I sure don’t want to rub the color off my Blackhawks on those rocks - that leaves the Flashback. And she does dance into those micro eddies and slip nicely through narrow slots. You’d do fine in her, I bet. The trick is getting in and out gracefully. Once you’re seated and under way she just loves to dance.
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Lovely description