Saturday, January 8, 2011

We seem to be lucky today so far we have not much snow compared
to the rest of Canada. But it does leave me wondering whose white world
should I enter next Emily Bronte's, the Otter's or Stan Roger's?



"COLD in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,

  Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!

Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,

  Sever'd at last by Time's all-severing wave?"


                                                            Remembrance
                                                   Emily Brontë

“so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”
                                                         Wind in the Willows
                                                                    Kenneth Grahame
           


"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones."


                                      Northwest Passage
                                       Stan Rogers

The evocation of history and memory seen through a snowy curtain
can be pretty effective for me. 
It leads me to appreciate the connections we
form not just to our own past but the past of others through art and literature.
Winter seems  a perfect time for reflection, stories, music and armchair
adventure.









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