“It occurs to me now that I have never seen the ice-storm put upon canvas, and have not heard that any painter has tried to do it. I wonder why that is. Is it that paint cannot counterfeit the intense blaze of a sun-flooded jewel?”
Mark Twain
Along the moonless landscape, under the cover of darkness, crept a primordial spirit working with sinister glee–toiling throughout the long night painting a dangerously beautiful masterpiece. The innocents who slumbered, wrapped warm in the chaste dreams of ignorant bliss, would soon awaken to a new diamond encrusted twinkling world.
The ancients knew the spirit as Woden or Cailleach Bheur, today it is Old Man Winter who has come calling. With a single sweeping motion of an ice ladened brush, the world has been transformed. Gone from the fleshy fabric of Mother Nature’s genteel handiwork, with the joy of her tactile beauty, is the very essence of life’s warmth. For now, as far as the eye can see, lies a glistening cold, heartless prism.
With each gust of wind, the eery jingle of the massive wind chimes of limbs, full with ice clanging against ice, groaning under the weight of a mantle of water transformed, reminding the brave, who venture out, to be wary of all things overhead. The trees now alive with the rustling of the shimming sound of heaviness. In the distance the familiar roar of an explosion—wood shattering under the crushing weight of its tomb of frozen water.
For unto us this day, the world we know has been transformed.
Foreign yet strangely familiar.
Dangerously tempting, like the alluring siren who, beckoning to all weary travels to come gaze upon the beauty, falsely offers safety and security. Beware of those things that glitter, for not all are meant to be embraced. . .
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