One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
wallace stevens the snow man 1954
My family and I are from Los Angeles - it's a big city close to wild places and there's a lot to see. I like to look at the small things, the things that exist quietly while everything else goes on. The words of the French novelist Georges Perec in his 1973 essay Approaches to What? said it best:
"My intention (is) to describe what remains; that which we generally don't notice, which doesn't call attention to itself, which is of no importance: what happens, what passes when nothing passes, except time, people, cars and clouds."
