There are times when the colour emanating from the stained glass windows my husband installed decades ago throughout our home are just so entrancing I feel I must capture their essence in a photograph. Invariably, I never quite manage. They just don't appear as compelling, the colour shadings don't come out true, and it's not close to possible to capturing the effect the windows with their shifting, living colours invoke in your aesthetic when you view them directly.

We've lived with them for so long that it is sometimes easy to overlook their presence. Then suddenly we 'notice' their presence and are drawn to standing before them. We don't need a sunny day to illuminate the windows and their colours; because the glass is ever-changing its shadings, it doesn't matter if it's an overcast day, if dusk is falling, or even if the exterior is dark along with the interior; the glass seems to live and express a presence uniquely its own.

So on occasion I take photographs and examine them and try to find the living spirit of the stained glass in them and it simply cannot be done. The photographs are pleasant, but they aren't capable of reflecting the fluctuating presence of the colours, how they cast their essence into a room, the manner in which they impress upon our sight and emotions, much less the atmosphere they convey. The glass, imagined creatively, cut and shaped in jigsaw-puzzle pieces, assume their life on assemblage. They become a permanent landscape of the imagination, the permutations of light and shade enliven and intrigue, demanding our attention.

But they're not by any stretch of the imagination comparable to a true living landscape, the one we in this family escape to daily for a brief period of a tramp through our nearby woodland. The forest itself invokes in us a type of spiritual appreciation of nature's benevolence, irrespective of weather conditions or the seasons.

Our two little dogs accept the landscape in a way far different than we do, but at the core of our interior beings we are reactive to nature in a way similar to theirs. A peace descends upon our spirits, we feel comfortable and relaxed, and our minds become occupied with a type of serenity that only nature can provide to her creatures. Nature offers her landscapes for our comfort and all we have to do is be aware that the landscape is there and prepared to welcome our presence, however temporarily.

We had full sunshine today after a briefly overcast morning, and a return finally to weather conditions more consistent with the time of year than we've been experiencing the past month. The result is the steady erosion of the early snowpack. Each time we venture out into the ravine to ramble the forest trails there is less and less snow on the forest floor. Yesterday the conditions were slushy but today, though the daytime high is more moderate, and there is an absence of the high wind that swept through the forest yesterday, at ground level everything has frozen fast.

So, despite the relative moderation of temperature we would have been rash to abandon the icers we have strapped over our boots. Their utility was more than proven today as we made our way through the still-snowed and increasingly icy conditions on the trails. One young woman with a boisterous young dog she kept on leash contemplated her chances of remaining upright while her young and large and therefore muscular dog pulled her every which way in an excess of vigorous excitement, and decided after all not to risk going downhill in her boots that lacked the assurance of balance our
icers gave us.