Jim Roche Photos

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Winter in Burn's Bog

The bog, when frozen, opens up. Its interior becomes visible, its skeletal system, clear. Water that normally runs for one day and disappears the next freezes, yet the movement of the water is traced in its odd shapes and layers of frozen surfaces. Some plants are frozen inside the ice, like bugs in amber. Their colour remains bright and life like. Most of it will thaw and just go on with what it was doing before the sudden freeze. Birds fill the lower branches of the bushes and brambles, searching for seeds. They call back and forth. I don’t know if they are sharing what they found or warning others to stay away. The low winter sun casts shadows which in the spring are never disappear. It reminds you that we are moving, not the sun. We’ve got it all wrong.