During my walk the other day when I captured a few intriguing bird photos, I actually spent most of the time loitering about the confluence of several creeks that feed the lake.  The area turns lush green during spring and summer months, a lavish garden of heavy woods and thicket.  But during late autumn and winter months it paints a very different picture, a naked congregation of trunks and limbs punctuated with evergreen bushes, a reminder of the stark reality hidden behind verdant tapestries seen throughout the rest of the year.

Yet I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the almost desolate, barren landscape, perhaps as much as I normally am when it gushes forth with life.  There rests within the nakedness of it all a certain promise of things to come.  Like bears hibernating, the sleeping behemoths reaching toward the sky will soon awake, and it is that very potential upon which my eyes feasted as my feet carried me to and fro.

The empty canvas will not remain blank for long, I know.  Soon—quite soon, in fact—an explosion of color will burst upon the scene.  Winter’s bleak austerity will give way to summer’s rich opulence.  Before then, however, I find unexpected beauty in the bleak textures, random bits of color, and openness of what soon will close.