Frosted Beauty...In The Haze

I know many people who hate the weather we had in Northern Utah today. They hate the cold. They hate the smog. They hate the inversion. They hate the frost.

I love it!

I don't know when exactly I came to love this kind of weather, but I remember one time back when I was in high school. For some reason I noticed everything around me on that cold morning. I noticed everything because everything I could see was covered in frost.

It looked amazing!

Trees, cars, grass, nothing was spared. This morning I didn't know if we'd get the same effect. I drove to work in a thick fog--sometimes the sun comes out and burns off the fog and frost. Not today. Today everything stayed covered in ice. I went out on my lunch break and snapped a few pictures. They weren't the best subjects, but I loved seeing how everything looked.

The trees made me think of a childhood memory, too. When I was young, we had a basement full of incredible things. My dad was sort of a hoarder and most of what he collected I didn't have the understanding or experience to know what they were. I did come across two boxes--maybe a foot square--that contained flock. I asked my mom what they were and she told me my dad bought these boxes in case he wanted to flock a Christmas tree. Since it was most likely a product of the 1960s, I have no idea what kind of poisons those boxes contained. We never did use it--probably for the best. And as I walked around the business offices, I thought back on those boxes...strange memory recall.

Yes, many people will take to social media and complain about the cold and the fog, but on days like this, I think outside becomes absolutely beautiful.

On A Gloomy Thursday Morning...

Last week I was given a temporary assignment at work that took me back to a building where I worked for a decade. It's located downtown Salt Lake City near the famous City County Building and the Salt Lake City Library. The last day of my temporary assignment I went to get a quick bit of breakfast and brought my camera with me.

A few years back, there was a morning in which fog engulfed the downtown buildings. It was like being inside a cloud (because that's exactly what had happened...). I took my camera out with me that morning, too, and I got a lot of really cool pictures. When I went out last week, the fog wasn't so thick, but it did create a somewhat creepy vibe. I especially liked how the central section of the City County Building looked all spooky and Scooby-Doo-esk. The clock adds a great touch, too.

I'm not a professional photographer, but if I were, I'd be looking, actively seeking out locations and situations where things look not as they always do. Talk to any photographer--especially professional ones--and they'll tell you stories of staying up all night, being out in elements in poor conditions, waiting sometimes for hours, all to get that perfect shot. Sometimes it pays off, many times, it doesn't, but the fun is in the journey.

There are times when I wish I could be a professional photographer, but things didn't turn out that way. It's a great hobby and thankfully my wife has supported me in it (photography can be a brutally expensive pursuit...). For now, I haul my big Nikon around almost everywhere I go, because you just never know what you're going to see. Last Thursday, I saw the morning cityscape  in a new way.

Living In A Winter Wonderland...

Because of the topography where we live we get what are called winter inversions. This means that cold air is trapped between the mountains and hot air above seals it in, like a lid on a pot. The trouble with inversions is all the pollution that normally vents itself into the atmosphere is trapped as well. People with breathing problems (and, really, everyone...) has to breathe the dirty air. I've heard that the area was known to the Native Americans as place for deep fogs that occurred every winter, long before any car or factory or wood-burning stove graved the land. I've researched, but I can't confirm it.

Everyone complains about the bad air. Everyone complains about it, but they still seem to drive their cars. I suppose I'm against it as well, but there's one result of the winter inversion that I absolutely love--it's the way it makes everything look. More specifically, it's the way everything, from plants to buildings to rocks, are encased in frost.

This morning and tonight I went outside and tried to capture the beauty on film (even though there's no film involved...). You know what I mean. I got a few shots, but I couldn't get just how beautiful is is, at least beautiful in my eyes.

Tonight as the kids are playing boardgames with their friends as they wait for 2016 to disappear only to be replaced by 2017, I ventured outside to a small pine tree we decorated with star-shaped LED lights. If you look carefully you can see what we're breathing encased in ice.

Eventually the inversion breaks apart, usually by a storm or a big wind, and the sun returns to our darkened world--it happens every year. All the frosted plants, buildings, and rocks are freed from their frozen prison. It's good for the lungs, but makes everything look ordinary again. Like everything else, there's a price to pay for beauty.