Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Shapeshifter Mountain





Every year Tennessee’s winter palette amazes me. Recently I’ve been out and about a lot, up and down the mountain. From the valley, the blue violet plateau provides a dichroic backdrop for the glowing straw and green pear colored fields. Red ochre earth radiates through black plum cotton stalks, mint and sage lichens illuminate bare taupe and mauve groves. Here on the mountain the landscape changes with the weather. A wet Sewanee is completely different from a dry Sewanee. Lifting fog magically sweeps it’s lavender brush over peach, mint and mauve luminescences before the sun returns to paint the very same objects russet and blue. Under a leaden sky awaiting the pink promise of snow, tan leaves dim to deep raisin surrounding almost black oak trunks, dark and brooding. They aren’t this color any other time. When the sun hides behind a passing cloud, taupe trunks pale to confederate grey, silver fleeces spun by hand, the yarns knit in richly textured cable stitches. Greens are everpresent, in moss, laurels, hemlocks and stream soaked algae.


Hope you enjoy these "color tiles" of this magnificent mountain.



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