The Willow & War Blog

Ice and Blue

Today looks like the days my father and I would hike along the Mt. Hope river after a Nor’easter shot through our canopy of Birch and Oak, Maple and Spruce, leaving behind a new world.

We would embark from the warm harbor of the kitchen where my mother made magic; the sweetness of fresh baking, flour flung across a table and the frequent blast of heat from an oven door swinging open.

We crashed into the wild and winter, shrouded in canvas and cotton, post-holing our way into a forest subdued by snowdrifts and ice. That stillness only interrupted by the rattling of branches fencing high up in the balcony of hardwoods.

The intrepid blue sky impossibly deep behind the white, almost electric with a fierce saturation.

A landscape which has become more of a feeling, now.