Winter Landscape

When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, the sky and the ground were both white. The skeletons of bare trees stood out, etched against the sky and snow. It made me think of the time a few years ago when I was driving along north Prospect on a gorgeous spring day and decided that, for me at least, what made winter landscapes so special was their emphasis on structure. In spring, summer and fall, the lines, angles and curves that shape the landscape tend to recede in favor of brilliant color. But in winter, with its limited palette of browns, grays and whites, the contours of the things that surround me take pride of place. Ice and snow only enhance the delicate tracery of tree branches. Even the outlines of man-made things seem more prominent in a snowy prairie landscape -- the contrast between white snow and the lines of a weathered gray-brown fence, for example, or the way that barns and silos, like trees, stand out more clearly on a monochromatic winter morning.