KANSAS WINTER

Frozen in Time, Central Kansas Farm

Dreams & Memories
I took this image years ago while driving through central Kansas in the dead of winter after a snow storm and recently transferred it from an obsolete slide to a computer file. I still like the bleak landscape with a lone ice covered tree standing beside the stark farm house and outbuildings which are unmercifully exposed to the raw elements. The blinding icy white snow reflects the intense light radiating amongst the corn stubble. And the memory of that cold sunlit afternoon still sends chills down my spine as the Canadian winds relentlessly blew unchallenged across the central plains in the heartland of America.

Northern winds and subzero temperatures pierce the very core of your body and reduce its internal temperature below normal. Rabbits had burrowed underground and quail coveys were backed into tight circles in the shelter of wild plum bushes to ward off the wind chill. A lone hawk anxiously circles on the horizon in a vain attempt to satiate hunger pains, but the wild creatures below are not foraging at this hour. The clear skies and sunshine betray the unseen high pressure area that hovers ominously over the fallow fields, as the temperature plummets below zero rendering the scene frozen in time--like an old memory or a long forgotten photograph.

Begin life with dreams, but depart with memories.