This year’s snow arrived with Christmas. In the weeks before, I realized that I could tolerate the New England winter cold quite well without snow. Now that snow and slush and ice and salt cover every walking surface, I am less content.

Yesterday, I took the photos in this post. I took many other photos – long-shots of the whole pond, the stark tree-line along the far side (that frame I just can’t seem to take enough photos of as the seasons roll by) with the pond’s surface of ice and snow in the foreground, and the now thinning and blond-colored reeds where the red-winged blackbird played all summer long.

Not satisfied with those shots, I found myself on my hands and knees, awkwardly framing pictures of miniature “snow-scapes.” It seems that each winter I fill photo files with snow-scapes – images of expanses of snow with varying surfaces. Invariably, these fascinating scenes make me think of the surface of the moon.

In the first photo, above, can you not imagine that this is an overexposed shot of the moon? Or, perhaps, a photo taken when the sun’s light is in full force and a telescope on Earth has zoomed-in for a close-up of the lunar surface?

A lunar sandstorm blew in as I crouched down and held steady against the blowing wind. It swept horizontally across the mountain peaks, shearing mass from the pointed tips as it pelted them. (Click on the picture above to see the storm raging over the landscape.) In the foreground (above) was a lone boulder, casting a sliver of a shadow.

And as I knelt and leaned low, looking through the lens, something passed between the sun and the moon, casting a long shadow in the foreground (above).

In a moment (below) the shadow-object moved, putting the lunar boulder in full shadow – a beautiful blue cast upon it.