I’m in the middle of the long dark now. The sun barely rises by 10:00 AM. Then a few minutes after 3:00, it’s already setting. I’m definitely feeling the effects of SAD syndrome. It feels like the long dark night of my soul, too.
The weather this week doesn’t help. It’s cold, windy, grey, gloomy, rainy, sleety, icy – pretty much everything I dread about winter in Alaska. It feels like the grimmest month of the grimmest year of my life.
I need to escape. Most winters I can do this physically, like birds and whales, overcoming the dark and dreariness by heading south and avoiding it altogether. Due to Covid, that really wasn’t an option this year.
But there is a way out. A way to make my winter escape. I can travel in my mind, trading the monochrome greys outside my door for brighter, happier shades, traveling back in time through my photo files to the vibrant colors of summer wildflowers in the Wrangells.
“Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.” – Joseph Campbell
Perhaps you too are feeling the drain from this long dark scary winter. Is the adversity and uncertainty so many of us are experiencing right now getting you down, too? Join me then on this journey in my mind, a winter escape to a bright and peaceful land filled with the ephemeral beauty of my favorite subject, wildflowers.
Thank you, Tina of Travels & Trifles, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, You Pick It!