Cold Sunday Run

I never know quite where we're going on our Sunday runs. It depends on weather and mud conditions, on how much sleep I've managed to get. But usually I try to do a five miler at least.

This was Sunday, December 10, and it would be the first run Chet had since he got beat up on the preceding Wednesday. He was ready! It was only 21 degrees, so he needed his little letter jacket.

Chet letters in Cute.

And Cross Country.

We got out to the road and took a left. Always the long run on Sunday.

We're going about 2.5 miles out on this road.

It hadn't started to snow yet, and I loved the sere colors of the landscape with Chet's red coat.  He doesn't much like walking in snow, but if he knows I want a picture of him he'll stop and give me several nice poses before he trots on. He absolutely knows what he's doing.

Reds were a theme. Is it any wonder we finally painted our house barn red? We were going for that weathered red. I think we got it.

I like photographing this hill best in summer, when I can shoot the butterfly weed against blue skies and puffy clouds. It's almost painful to look at my photos from August 2013, so sere is it now. But here it is.

This was a rare August day when there were swallowtails afloat, a rare day of towering cumulus and blue, blue skies. Truth is, we simply don't get those clouds or skies here in the winter. I remember upon moving to Cambridge Massachusetts, marveling that there was a place where the winter sky was often searing blue. Here, in the mid-Ohio valley, we wear gray flannel for what seems like the whole dang winter.

Oh look. Chet photobombs. What a surprise.

I may seem to be complaining, but I'm not. My spirit feeds on the turning of the seasons, on the contrasts between the lush and the stark. And especially on the cusp seasons, spring and fall, when one is surging into the fullness of June or falling into the emptiness of November. I need those changes. I'd probably lose my mind in a seasonless climate, looking for the change anyway. Change is the only constant, said Buddha. 

Same hillside in December. It's a nice hill in winter, too. Just nice in a whole different way, the difference between a country cottage drowning in flowers and an obelisk. There's the water tower that supplies our house with gravity feed water, peeking over a hill.

I like this shed, too, the lattice work roof and the red door. I notice them more in winter, when it's all about lines and graphics and spare shots of color.

I liked the diagonals in this scene. The car reminded me of a polar bear, that ivory white they have.

Snow makes you think about composition. The landscape is more graphic, like a drawing, than when it's all clothed in color.

Our destination is a retired church atop the watertower hill. A good place to go and reflect and worship a little, in our own reflective way, on a frigid gray Sunday in December.