Bunker Hill Road, 4 p.m.

    January 14, 2008 – The cold descended today, as promised, in a bluish haze, and is startling. It is beautiful, piercing, a bit disturbing. One pities the animals outside in it, and the dogs and I are finding more animal bodies out in the woods, starving, freezing,  hit by cars eating salt and looking for food, picked off by predators as they venture out. The temperature is well below zero now, and matter changes. Cars don’t start, pipes freeze, watering systems don’t work, and being outdoors is painful to face and limbs. It hurts to breathe sometimes.
  I am still struggling to capture the cold photographically, and find I am drawn to icescapes that are somewhat bleak, even though the landscape itself is not. I think I need to be more creative, not in the viewfinder but in my head.
  The cold is an apt metaphor for something I have learned, and that Eleanor Roosevelt preached long before me, which is the importance of doing what scares you, what disturbs you, as often as you can, and the idea for me is to take this bitter cold, which hurts my frostbitten fingers and legs, and challenges life on a farm, and to confront it, walk through it, do it.
    Photography helps do that. Tomorrow will be colder yet, and I think I will put all of the animals, including the hardy sheep, in the enclosed barn. And do some writing.