Butterfly Mind

Winter windows

It is Saturday and the trees are encased in ice. We slept with our bedroom window open, and in the deep stillness of night, I was startled awake by the sound of a loud crash. I thought it was drunk students knocking over garbage cans, and then we heard soft voices in the parking lot. A tree limb, heavy with ice, had fallen onto a car.

My legs are crossed at the cafe table by the kitchen window. Morning light shines in. This is my favorite place to sit. On the smooth round table are my earthenware coffee mug, a cup of ice water, my prompt box, an orchid, and a copy of A Land Remembered — my current Florida read. The fridge hums. The half-loaded dishwasher stands open. I hear my husband shuffle paper in the living room. Tear a check out of a checkbook. Occasionally, he clears his throat. A kettle of pinto beans clinks and groans on the stove. The glass lid beads with steam.

I’ve got the kitchen window cracked. It is inches from my body, and I feel icy January air on my hip. The air smells clean and cold and damp. A heavy drop of water splats on the window stool. Further away I hear gentle dripping on wet soil, on cement, on pavement. The ice in the trees crackles softly, and branches sway slowly under a shimmering weight. Liquid pools in the blacktop parking lot and on our cement stoop. The ground is too warm to freeze liquid into solid, but the air is not. A stirring of wind knocks crystal shards from high branches; ice clatters against our windows. I see tiny snow flakes fall among raindrops. The weather is raw today.

I think I’ll go outside.

Iced pine branches by Andrea Badgley on Butterfly Mind
Iced pine branches
Iced leaf
ice encrused evergreens
trunk and vine
winter path
iced pine needles
sparkly twig
iced pine needles
sparkly twigs

Andrea Badgley

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23 responses to “Winter windows”

  3. You made an ordinary winter afternoon sound so mysterious, fascinating and wonderful. I felt I was in that moment you describe. Beautiful!

  6. Gorgeous!! Brings back many happy memories of ice storms in North Carolina (at least, when we didn’t have to drive in them or just plain couldn’t, ’cause a pine tree’d snapped and fallen on the dang car!). Your photos and prose are lovely. Jean & Alex 🙂

    • Ice storms are more magical than I would have imagined. I took these photos in a trashed strip of woods behind our townhouse. The ground was littered with beer bottles and plastic grocery bags, but the ice made it a beautiful scene in spite of the trash.

  12. There’s nothing like the silence of snowfall…get out there and freeze your neck hairs, take some more pix!

    LTA

  16. The pictures are lovely and the writing is evocative. But, I’m totally hung up on “why is she sleeping with her window open during an ice storm?”

      • Ah! See I automatically go back to Cherry Ames series I read when I was a young teen. It was an adventure/mystery series written for what might be best described as “young moderns” about nurse Cherry Ames. They were written in the 30s and 40s. In one of the gripping adventures, Cherry and her dashing doctor had to save a family who almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning after they forgot to crack their windows before going to bed. So, of course, when I hear of people cracking their windows in winter, I immediately assume it is due to a lack of faith in carbon monoxide monitors.

        But, you know, “atmosphere” is an equally valid reason. 🙂