January to April, 2016

​Ice-crisped branches.
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​A dazzling sky early in the morning. 
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The water tower near my mom's house, swallowed up by a cold, dense fog.
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Train tracks in the early evening (February 16) and in the early morning (February 26).
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Here is a leaf that would not let go of its color, all the way through winter.
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Something about the color and glow of that narrow strip of meltwater captured my attention...it seemed like a rift, a portal into someplace Other.
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Sky and metal, color and geometry...
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I have a walking buddy when my son, Louis, is home on breaks from college. The next few pictures were taken on the path around Mountain Lake. (The lake, not the town.)
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What caused the snow to melt in a perfect circle like this?
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I like how the blue sky and brown grass set off the lovely variations of green in the trees. (By March we Minnesotans are pretty hungry for color.)
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​Curtains of water by the old dam.
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A frozen oil or gas spill. Kind of cool how the colors separated out. 
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​Just for fun I enlarged the image and upped the saturation. Pretty. 
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​Not so pretty: worms. One March morning, after heavy rains, it was a huge challenge to take more than a few steps without squishing any worms. But they did make some cool patterns in the dirt!

​I didn't go on as many walks in March and April, for two good reasons: a long road trip with my daughter and a move to St. Paul! The 2016 photos prior to this point were all taken in my small home town of Mt. Lake, where I'd been living temporarily with my mother. From this point on, most of my photos will be in my neighborhood in St. Paul. 

And the first one: the butterflies on the sidewalk outside Riverside Library. Moving can make a person feel disoriented, but I felt a little more grounded after discovering these butterflies. And there's a reason for that. This blog by my friend Karen Henry Clark explains it all.