*soft as snow can be

Have a peaceful Christmas!

☙

*white

No white Christmas this year, but I am still living off the days, when all was covered so nicely with snow.

☙

*introversion

Peaceful, introverted days.

Sorting things out

to start the new year

fresh and light.

But also enjoying new little things –

little gifts from friends and recent flea market finds.

Feeling grateful and ready to complete the last month of the year.

☙

*short days

Soon it will be the shortest day of the year. When the sun sets early in the snowless time, everything turns into a melancholic spectacle.

☙

*orange light

A last outcry of autumn.

The most orange light

you won't see in any other season.

Perfectly matching the fruits I'm enjoying the most right now:

persimmons and clementines.

☙

*winter home

Morning silence 

in the bedroom.

☙

*dawn

When the mist rises

and dawn is breaking.

A magical day time.

☙

*cozy home

 Cozy moments inside.

☙

*tiny red leaves

Meanwhile the colors have faded, the snow as well, but we had frost in the morning which is so beautiful to look at, when the winter sun rises in it's strong red colors.

☙

*wood quarter

Our last little trip to the wood quarter

before the snow came.

Mustard fields where blooming,

it felt more like spring than autumn.

☙

*otherworld

We had our first snow and it couldn’t be any better. The specific light, the smell, the feeling when you breathe in the fresh air.

I get up early, prepare the stove fire, take my camera, and step immediately out of the warmth of the house. Strangely, I don’t meet anyone on my walks. It seems people here are rather less enamoured with misty weather or snow. The playground is entirely mine. It’s early enough to see deer and flocks of starlings chattering in the bare treetops, and every now and then the call of a crow rings out. The bright mantle of snow reveals paths in the forest that are normally inaccessible, blocked by wild bushes and dense foliage in the warmer seasons. I don’t feel the frostiness because I am fully in the now, focused on the magic of ever-transforming nature. No signs of stress or suffering anywhere – just devotion and serenity as far as the eye can reach.

Silently, I feel all winters I have ever lived within me. I want to crawl under the blanket of snow, reach my hands up to the sky, let myself drift. There is no aim or definable purpose that I can claim as mine. There is no "me" in myself. Out there, I dissolve in a truly otherworldly place, far away from everything.

☙

*keys and silence

 Sometimes we don't know

that we have the keys already.

☙

*thin silver threads

Spiderwebs.

When they are full of tiny water drops,

reflecting the mild light of a misty fall morning,

they appear like a true masterpiece to me.

Pure, transient perfection.

☙

*morning mist

The greatest joy,

to wander in the morning mist

that envelops everything out there

and reveals thousands of flimsy silver threads

connecting everything.

☙