Freeze-Up

“Now the country belonged to me, all of it…For half a year it would lie there alone, frozen and white and undisturbed. The deer on sunny days would work out into its gullies and sometimes cross the ridges. The wolves would range its waterways and on moonlight nights they would howl from the tops of the hills. At dusk the horned owls would hoot from the darkness of the timber and northern lights would play the horizons with no one there to see.

    For half a year the wilderness would return. It was for that reason I wanted to spend a day there, to get the feel of it after the violence had passed, to recapture the sense of wildness before the big snows made travel difficult. I wanted to know the breathlessness during the period of waiting which always comes at the time of freeze-up.”

                                      -Sigurd Olson, The Singing Wilderness

©Tom Gable

 

©Tom Gable©Tom Gable