"A world undone"

The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone… (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

Three months of hard work and learning have left me exhilarated and exhausted, and grateful for a holiday respite... my first paid vacation in a dozen years. Having time and energy only to watch summer and autumn race by, I now seek out the beauty in the stillness, in the husks and hulls of "the world undone" as winter descends upon the landscape.

Winter silences me, creatively; I find myself thinking and feeling more but doing less -- hiking less, photographing less, writing less, creating less. But there is more time to watch when gardens lie fallow and tools are put up for the season. Watch, consider, let be for now.