February Fog

Last night I walked in an easy isolated park with a little waterfall and miles of tree covered rolling hills. It was challenging only in that the once deep snow was melting and the trail was slippery. I fell twice, once sliding into a tiny ravine that sucked me in and wouldn't let me out. I felt like the poster child for Medic Alert.

It was absolutely silent except for the rare hoot of owls and a chorus of coyotes at the very beginning of my walk. Darkness was complete - I saw artificial light only twice in three hours of walking. It is just above freezing here for the first time in quite a while and I was too hot for most of my hike, then my fever caught up with me and I started to feel very cold and somewhat faint. The last two miles to my car were made with odd little flashes of light and dark patches swimming across my vision. Not really what I'm looking for in these dark walks.

This silly cold is robbing me of much of my joy. February is starting out gray inside and out and I feel a desperate need for something sudden and exciting to enter my life.

I know intellectually that I will start to feel better and the sun will be out in not too long a time, but it seems an eternity when all is buried in fog.

Sickness makes writing difficult and so I tried my hand at redesigning my blog. I'm lacking talent or maybe sickness makes that impossible as well, and I'm faced with failure.

My vision was to have the top be a photo, composited photo, or drawing of a frozen lake with a dimly lit hillside rising up from the far side. On the hillside a snow covered trail would cut across diagonally. On the left would be a full moon just kissing the horizon with the silhouette of a bare tree against it. The tree would be casting a shadow across the lake and the shadow of the branches would touch the bottom of the photo. There would be another silhouette tree on the right, again with shadow branches crossing the lake.

I would like the shadow tangle of branches to continue down the sides of my blog in a sort of spiderwebby fashion. I'm guessing a single repeated tile would give me the effect I want.

Of course, I have no idea what I'm talking about. I took four years of art classes in high school and realized I can sketch something I can see and I love throwing pots, but I'm not good at much else.

Is there anyone out there who can make my vision a reality?