An Epiphany on Epiphany...

   My first photograph of the pond for 2015, on the feast day of Epiphany, January 6th.  Most appropriate, I thought.

   This pond has been an epiphany for me in so many ways.  Each day I visit it brings me new insights and meaning...even new ways of making my photographs.  On this day the temperatures hovered around 0 but the wind chill made it feel more like -20.

   This little fishing shack on the far edge of the pond stood in a kind of splendid solitude.  Ice fishermen will huddle inside by the tiny wood stove to keep warm as they fish. They would need it on a day like today.  But I wasn't thinking about fishing, I was thinking about the story of Epiphany.  After the wise men visited Bethlehem, which is the tradition of Epiphany, an angel came to them and told them that the should return home by a different way.  That thought, and this photograph, would stay with me for the rest of the day.

   I began this project last June and now in January I have rounded the corner and I'm heading for the "homestretch" as it were but I am definitely "returning home by a different way."  Hearts and minds that are stretch can never return to their previous size or shape...they have transformed into a new state of being and, in my case, a new way of looking at the world.  That was my personal epiphany on this Epiphany of 2015.  A great way to begin the year.