Colors of December

This has been inspired by Sue over at Life Looms Large. These aren't the colors I expected to be showing this time of year, but it is what it is. That goes for my picture taking ability too. ;-) It's not the greatest. Rather than caption each picture, I'm giving you the whole lot of them together to see. There is a snap of a lovely little critter trail through the undergrowth, a long shot of the top of my barn, complete with red fox whirligig, heavy dew on Ponderosa pines, and a lovely purple and pink sunrise, or at least what passed for sunrise yesterday. Even past 8:00 am yesterday it was a quiet, dark and dewy morning, dense with smells of damp earth, hibernating worms, cedar, fir and pine trees. Everywhere I stopped to take a picture I threw my gloves down, a jarring royal blue against the never ending backdrop of greens and rust and jewel like drops of water waiting to fall from the trees and withered blades of grass. Off to join others and descend into the earth, into what I imagine, as a never ending tangle of roots holding up my universe. All thirsty for the wet bounty above.

If I forget myself at this time of year, remove the barriers of body and preconception, I swear I can feel the earth writhe and struggle beneath my feet. A hundred million tendrils, each growing at an almost imperceptible rate, moving ever outward to lay the underground in a spiders web of infinite battles won in mere millimeters. All is silent and dormant or dead looking above, a fine slight of Mother Natures hand. While most Decembers are about sky and air and whiteness, a cold melting buffer from the grounds endless strife. This December is about earth, dark, rich and mysterious.