August Regis Portendat

I chose not to photograph, or rather attempt to photograph, today's eclipse. A little roughed up from a work trip drive to New York, then a delayed flight that had me return to Minnesota at four ayem Saturday. The body seems to lag behind the return, so for three days after there is a sluggishness. This final day is a good day, then, for a solar eclipse. Cosmological events were often held in more superstitious times to be portents of revolution and other negatively viewed events. It's hard to say what the 2017 eclipse portends, other than my time in our woods with camera to photograph perpendicular to the rays of our sun. 

Morning Lights

A few mornings back, during a communion of hyper cold and humid air before this week's warming, I woke to see lights in the trees. 

Not on the trunks and no slick, icy skin on the branches. The lights were exceptionally difficult to photograph, but quite magical with eyes alone. It made me wonder about the origins of lighting trees, if not Christmas lights specifically. So why did it happen, why now?

I went around the front, and found that all the smaller branches were frosted.

Like this.

Each crystal a plate extending perpendicular from the branch. Some, but not all, were at just the right angle to reflect the low, morning sun creating little points of brilliant light. If you move, you lose one light, but pick up new reflections from others. It's quite a thing to see.