winter – when the world’s at rest
It’s been 37°C (100°F) here in Morocco today. It’s the kind of heat that, when you open the window, feels like you just opened an oven. It’s also an asocial kind of heat, because you don’t want to be close to any other mammals. It’s May now. I can only imagine what July or August will be like!
In Finnish, we have a special word for the rare days when the temperature goes over 25°C in the Summer – we call it helle. So as you might guess, this heat goes beyond my experiences. It’s good to expand your horizons, I guess!
All this heat has made me daydream of Winter. Winter in Finland, that is – ice, snow, crisp air, a world of blue and white. So I thought it’s time for another post that has been hanging out in the drafts pile for a while. The first part of the series was about Autumn. I hope you enjoy the photos, whether you’re in need of a bit of cooling or not!
Sometimes it’s so cold that the air turns your breath into ice.
Some Winter days are just like this: white and blue. Those are the best days for pretending to be Jesus and walking on water – it’s common that people drive their cars on the ice-covered lakes and sea during Winter.
There is Winter in the city…
… and then there’s Winter in the forest. The Winter air is a very special thing – it can take your breath away, and it gives rise to colours you can’t see anywhere else.
The beginning of Winter.
There’s something enjoyable and beautiful about every season – and sometimes, it takes a different season to remember that. I want to finish with a poem I wrote an early winter’s day, a couple of years ago.
The Arrival
white crystals sprouted and sprinkled
over green grass and shallow waters
forming thin sheets of miniature suns,
ever growing, ever fusing, ever blinding
forcing what has not yet changed
into a diamondy dress, to be kept safe,
and into a long, deep, undisturbed sleep;
a false sense of time, itself, stopping
the frost alone will keep on going,
growing, building layers upon layers
of thin sheets of self-repairing glass
until the world is nothing but pure, white beauty
but there is always an end to this aggression
always, just like it returns, always
the end will come with a bow to the sun,
then begin again when we look away, voiceless
all this slow death, all this rapid life
due to the tilt of an axis.
alternative viewpoints 
beautiful poem, Hannele, and photos too. it’s 100F in Los Angeles California today too, but nice sunny 74F here in Nashua NH. [and, the south pole is melting!] like leaning too hard on a pinball machine, we “tilt” the weather.
😉 piip
74F sounds nice! 100F for a day is sort of interesting and fun – but I know that in two months or so it’s going to be commonplace (right when the locals are fasting). that’ll be interesting, too! but will it be fun? i don’t know yet.
Just thinking about 37 makes your photos cool and refreshing. That’s just oppressive. Good post.
🙂 Thank you, Lyle!
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