Straight lines

Looking out east this morning it struck me how few straight lines I see.  There are the fence posts, and a house in the distance, but other than that nothing is straight. The tree trunks are close to straight, but the overwhelming impression is the curves of the hills and the clouds, the broken lines of branches and grasses. Except for the snow fields, there are no big areas of single colors.  The landscape is full of detail and complexity, the colors are subtle and vary continuously.  I look at an area covered in trees, and at first glance the mass of branches look a monotone brownish grey, but look a little more closely, and the tips of some branches are reddish, some yellowish, and the brown grey mass devolves into bits of many shades of brown almost to black, and grey almost to white. When I was young I loved the cityscape – the towering buildings, the gleaming windows, all those straight edges and hard surfaces.  There was a kind of energy that came with the city noise, and motion, and hurry, and angularity that made me feel great.  But that was then. This is the landscape that speaks to me now. It’s a landscape for patience and contemplation, a landscape more for being than doing.

Dusk.  The clouds are a hundred shades of pink and blue and grey.  There is no wind.  The whole world I can see is still, except for the dried bushes closest to the window that shiver a little in the evening cold. I’m sitting at the huge west facing window now.  There’s a high ceiling in this part of the living room that was added on, Jay guesses ten feet, and the window goes all the way up.  (Eleven feet – he measured it.)  The view is less than one third earth, and two thirds sky. The snow darkens in the fading light. I heard a woodpecker this morning, but now it’s quiet.  Time for dinner.