Winter lowlights and highlights? You bet. Just January-ing, waiting for significant snowfall, and lengthening the daylight little by little. All three are highlights. And concurrently Tony and Glen are whittling down the winter work list, prettying the place up for springtime sometime soon. Four weeks after the winter solstice, lowlights are nevertheless part of the mix.
Today let’s revisit a pair of past winter lowlights. In the snapshots above and below Rosslyn’s barns are nestled dramatically into an evolving landscape one decade apart, solemnly-but-handsomely under illuminated on virtually sunlight-less January days.
There’s an austerity this time of year when the sun opts out. Or skimps on radiance, reserving brilliant affection for another day. Absent warm light, my environment is altered — starker and moodier, contours more proximate, atmosphere more intimate — as the hibernal heaviness enwraps me like a thick knit muffler.
What good is the warmth of summer without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
— John Steinbeck
Without winter lowlights, the highlights are less pronounced.
As I understand it, “lowlights” originated as a nautical reference in the mid 1600s referring to a lighthouse or a beacon that was lower than other nearby navigational aids. Highlights and lowlights helped mariners ply unknown and unfamiliar waterways without running aground and getting marooned. It seems to me that there’s something similar happening here. Today’s lowlights offset tomorrow’s highlights. Cold, tenebrous winter gives sweetness to springtime. Sometime. Soon.
Winter Lowlights
January-ing;
whittling down winter work
into kindling.
What do you think?