After leaving Pine Hill Nature Preserve I paid Shades State Park itself a brief tour, descending into Devil’s Punchbowl and from there to Silver Cascades.
The Punch Bowl and the connecting canyon offered some pretty icicles.
My favorite was the frozen heron below. That’s what happens when you wait for too long.
Prospect Point has the best views, both across and down to Sugar Creek.
It will be another month before this will turn green again, but it feels like it will take a decade.
The Pine Hills Nature Preserve at Shades State Park is one of the most beautiful places of Indiana, and in deep winter even the blunt access trail acquires a certain charm.
Trees and rocks in the valley seem to be bending under the snow.
Two people had left a few footprints the days before, otherwise the landscape was as pristine as it gets.
At the backbones I was grateful to see that others had been able to cross…
From the top the trees reveal their structural beauty.
Down at the bottom the look up is mind bending.
The way back follows the creek without further risks.
And yes, there is color, too.
More heavy snowfall has transformed the forest floor.
Instead of a mess of leaves and twigs and dirt, we get pristine branches in isolation.
Then their bigger brothers and sisters, the trees. The Romans thought a tree to be feminine while the barbarians in the north considered tree as masculine — what do we really know about them?
Capable of growth …
… and death, like us.
Wahr spricht, wer Schatten spricht.
The ice on the lake shone so brightly that it did not look like ice at all.
Frozen into this block of ice were broad, sword-shaped leaves, thin straws, seeds and detritus from the woods, a brown, straddling ant – all mingled with bubbles that had formed and which appeared clearly as beads when the sun’s rays reached them.
And what was this?
It must be the ice palace.
But this was unexpected, too: she was standing in what looked like a room of tears.
No one is involved deeply enough to be present. A blast of noiseless chaos may cause the air to vibrate in distant bedrooms, but no one wakes up to ask: What is it?
No one knows.
Now the palace, with all its secrets, goes into the water-fall. There is a violent struggle, and then it has gone.
Quotes from The Ice Palace by Tarjej Vesaas, translated by Elizabeth Rokkan.
The permanent process of erosion is best visible in winter when it is suspended. The natural pull of gravity seems powerless against the tight grip of the frost.
Because the trees and rocks had somehow to get there, we can be certain that warmer weather will set things dramatically in motion again.
Today’s pictures were taken all at the same spot, where McCormick Creek bends slightly and the canyon is deepest. All this is a relic from the last ice age.
At the moment it looks like it is in a state of eternal permanence.
We clearly understand little about time.
After 4-5 inches of snow over night, I couldn’t resist to get up early to be the first on Pate Hollow. Well, I wasn’t quite the first, as numerous animal tracks testify, but otherwise the trail was so completely virginal that it was almost invisible.
Snow increases gravity, which is why I have changed the usual aspect ratio from 3:2 to 2:1.
There is resistance against the gravity, and efforts of verticality have become more pronounced against the uniformly white backdrop.
The Black and White contrast makes it possible to spot the Baxter branch in a trail-less valley down below which we will pay a visit soon.
Then there is my favorite detour to the desolate peninsula.
The lake only appears to be frozen. Snow can be treacherous, too.
I return to the trail: but where is it?
As time expands (it took me three instead of the usual two hours to hike this trail today), the attempts to defy gravity become more and more futile.
But there is no giving up. Just look at these pine needles!
Can we do this, too — transform our transient stream of thoughts, worries, and hopes into something else, like frost transforms water into ice?
How do we begin? How do we get ready for it like water always is?
In Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal (quotes below in the translation by Marianne Moore) the two siblings Sanna and Conrad get lost on a vast glacier in a snow storm on their way home in the Alps. Frost has transformed the landscape, and is transforming the children, too, to the absolute essential.
The boy maintains hope, despite evident hopelessness, and his little sister maintains trust.
At last they came to a tract with not a tree on it.
“I don’t see any trees,” said Sanna.
“Perhaps the road is so wide we can’t see them because of the snow,” said the lad.
“Yes, Conrad,” said the little one.
“Sanna, we cannot go over there,” said the lad.
“No,” said the little one.
“We shall just turn around and get down somewhere else.”
“Yes, Conrad.”
These dialogues continue like this, while the children spend the night on the mountain in the ice. Conrad and Sanna are becoming ice, too, Conrad refracting reality and Sanna reflecting it back to him.
I thought I’ve done all of it: Forgot the camera, leave the battery uncharged, overwrote the memory card. And not just once. So I have become pretty good at double checking my equipment.
I did check everything before I went today to take some shots of my beloved Pate Hollow trail in snow.
What I forgot was that I had set the camera to take double exposures when I took photos for Wenckheim X. Back then, I had try to compose the double exposures carefully.
Not so here. They are completely unintended. Of course most of the pictures are just trash.
Some, however, came out nicely, when the subconscious effort to capture the atmosphere of the place superposes its actual appearance.
I see this as a unique opportunity. There is no way to make the same mistake unintentionally a second time.
We continue on to the Eastern loop of the Mogan Ridge trail, another 6 miles or so. It follows indeed mostly a ridge, with ups and downs.
Ridges are an interesting design pattern, they can serve as watersheds between light and dark, for instance.
They are — isn’t it in the word? — rigid borders, immutable, and encourage compartmentalization.
Walking a ridge means having a constant choice: Shall we go left and hide in the woods, or do we confront the alien who is beckoning strangely?
What better place for us than this lake, protected between two ridges? Don’t we want peace?
Someone has decided to stay.
The true ridge walker will avoid either choice and stay on the ridge, letting all possibilities pass.
And on we go. Stone faces are looking at us again with disdain. They didn’t have a choice.
Do we have regrets? No, we’ve made our choice.
The Inner Frame 