In Black and White

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Yesterday afternoon, around 4:30, I was in the kitchen starting dinner. The little kids had just headed out the front door to play with the "fort" that the snow plow delivered to the front of our house. As I was standing at the kitchen sink, I gazed down at the creek at the bottom of the ravine in our backyard, and in the fading afternoon light, the scene appeared black and white. It was really very breathtaking. Though I am not a fan of the problems that come with loads of snow that sticks around for weeks, the scenery provided by the snow-covered landscaped is not one I would tire of. I especially love that optical illusion of black and white.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything in our world gave the illusion of black and white? Not to our vision, but to our souls. If good was clearly white, and evil clearly black, how easy it would be to stay away from what would befoul our souls.

After standing and taking in the beautiful scene out my kitchen window in "black and white," I grabbed my camera and headed out the back door. The deck was still covered over with a good nine inches of snow, now crusted with ice, and I had on nothing but my Lands End all-weather mocs, but I carefully navigated (these old bones would not like to "hit the deck") my way to the rail to look over the edge to the creek below.

Peering over the deck rail, I was instantly reminded of my father. My father died suddenly when I was a college sophomore. It was the week after Easter, and when he died there were pictures in his camera that none of us knew about. My mother later developed the film and found photos that he had taken just the week before he died. It had snowed -- a big April snow, and he had gone out at the crack of dawn to a nearby park t0 take some snow shots. He had always been an amateur photographer, and for as far back as I have a memory I remember him posing us kids for a picture, or trying to get the perfect still nature photo. The pictures that he took that morning were stunning. They had the same essence of black and white that I had seen out my kitchen window. Black water and white snowy banks. Black tree branches laden with snowy white fluff. Every object defined by the light as either white or black.

I took a couple shots yesterday, but they weren't what I had hoped for. Several large white pines, which had not obstructed my view from the kitchen window, are between the deck and the creek. So no matter how hard I tried, there was green in the picture.

Ultimately, I decided to let my computer make them into the black and white images I had in my head.
















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