mornings

Looking across Sturgeon Lake, southward from Sturgeon Point towards Lindsay.

In the shade where the sun has not reached yet to melt the frost, the remnants of a crystal-embroidered brocade carpets the forest floor. I am very susceptible to this momentary, tiny, aching beauty. Not remembering the beauty frost can create, I was not anticipating these small moments of delight. They are a gift, reminding me of the changing seasons, the cycles of life and death. It is time for frosts, but I had forgotten how it can sparkle on the edges of grass and leaves, or later, in the dead of winter, paint my window panes.

I have to stop and literally crawl around on my hands and knees, trying to get a decent photo or two. I have ideas running around in my head for doing watercolours of this...

What did I read recently about that heart-breaking aspect of intensely beautiful moments, especially long-anticipated moments? Here it is, a quote from Karen Armstrong's A History of God, about the consciousness of the ephemeral nature of everything, the ineffable that always remains unseen beyond what we see:

post coitum omne animal tristis est

p.s. The red-tailed hawk just rose up from behind the cedar-rail fence at the edge of the yard and flew westward, where the mists are being burned off by the morning sun.