Even After the Glitter Fades (#91)
Moving through the anxiety, we can find clarity. Plus: The finished 2023 Temperature Blanket Project, and painting geometry with snow shoes.
There’s no glitter to hide behind in January.
Brash baubles safely tucked away for a future promise, the interiors are stripped of lush warmth spiced with laughter and nostalgia of seasons past.
Except there is glitter.
I look through the columns of light that desperately try to warm trunks, and I can see it through the trees: scooped from the white ground and held aloft in the wicked air that weaves around us, husks of man and plant. The trees are moving, but only just; their bodies rigid while their crowns deign to lightly sway in the murderous breeze. As if they want to wave, but are nervous that they will be caught doing so. Their bodies creak loudly despite their small movements; old hardwood groaning, like future floors underfoot.
And the forest air searches, biting for more sparkle, yet bracing; bracing our fall from lofty resolutions that now hold mass in the new year. They call it wind chill, but that term sounds too dainty, because it’s anything but: the air acts as whetstone, sharpening sun and water left suspended to become infinite tiny knives that prick cheeks, tighten mouths and foreheads, scrape moisture from eyes.1
We don’t call it wind chill during the summers here on the coast of the Bay of Fundy, but that title sounds more appropriate then - when we want to relish in the sun’s warmth during the long daylight, but the ocean breeze has us reaching for a light sweater.
This is different. It’s unsettling. The air speeds up and licks away heat from the body faster and faster. You can’t stay warm enough; the layers will never be enough. And with more speed, the air will trade the moisture lingering in tissues to crystals. Frozen jewels. Without more speed in our step, we, too, will harden into diamonds.
And yet - I’ve grown fond of it. When the wind gusts, it kicks up the snow to shimmer around us like we’re all living in a roadside tchotchke. I pull myself into my red winter coat a bit tighter, and we forge through the trail laid before us - by a creature of some size, two-legged or four. And when the snow slowly re-settles along the ground, the air seems all the sharper for it.
This is different: it’s clarifying. January illuminates spaces that stay cozy dark in December; the month, and the months ahead, are laid bare before us, glittering with promise.
Weekly Segments of SciArt
Documenting Climate Change Through Fiber Art
I lamented the absence of the cold last year when, as I watched rivulets of rain run down our windows, I shared the idea of creating a “tempestry”. It wasn’t a true “tempestry” (as it eschewed the prescribed palette), but it certainly painted a portrait of a world on fire in 2023:
Angling for More Snow
Although it is currently and fiercely snowing at this time of writing, it’ll be washed away by mid-evening. Such is our coastal climate these days. But, if I had a substantial amount of snow, and a drone, I might be tempted to try one of former engineer Simon Beck’s mathematical masterpieces.
“It started out as a kind of exercise: he would place a marker in an open patch of snow, a nucleus around which he would chart a series of equidistant points, then he would connect the points with his own tracks and patterns would emerge.”
Meet the Former Engineer Who Makes Mind-Blowing Land Art With Nothing But a Pair of Snow Shoes and Some Simple Math
Maybe on a smaller scale, though.
This year is starting more appropriate to a January temperature. The wind chill the past few days is more expected: -12°C to -18°C (or 10°F to -1°F). (This is nowhere near the record, which was set last February and currently stands at -47°C wind chill.)
This is so well written. Thanks fir sharing.
I need to quilt my temperature quilt top from 2023.
What a beautiful piece, Bryn! I especially resonate with ‘January as clarifying’...it also captures the sense of hope...new beginnings...the imagery draws me into what needs to be clarified...