Ghost Leaves

On my way to church yesterday morning I wished I had brought my camera. It was a remarkable winter morning in southeastern Minnesota. It was about 5 degrees (F) and fog was hanging in different places. If you aren't aware of the results of fog at cold temps, it is called hoar or rime frost. To say it is beautiful is an understatement.

The first thing you notice is that the trees have grown fuzzy white. From a middle to close distance you can say it is like the trees have grown white leaves overnight. Then when the sun hits them you think they have become leaves of diamond.

The fog had no rhyme or reason to it. Some of it was in the valleys and some on the flat hilltops. At one spot it is close to the ground, thick enough that the church was invisible until I got to the parking lot entrance. At other spots you could look ahead and see the ground fog but the top of the radio transmitter tower was bright and clear.

Then, looking across the field toward the different clumps of trees emerging from the fog you had to look twice to make sure they weren't ghost leaves on the trees. The slight fog haze between me and the trees caused a fading of the dark tree trunks but the white leaves, ghostly and ephemeral, shimmered in reflection of the dim blue sky.

I realized that there was no way I could- in either words or pictures- capture all that I had seen. If you can capture it, you have lost it. Life like that, even still life like that, is its own world. It is part of what can make winter a wonderland.