Bare tree networks
More than halfway through April, and while it’s still cold, even Chicago can’t keep this up for much longer. Would it be strange to savor the end of winter? Maybe not the weather itself–what was interesting in December is much less so in April–but the appearance of winter?
An example: bare trees in winter have their own kind of beauty, especially in profile. Many of those trees are starting to show their buds and seeds.
Within weeks they will become entirely different objects. Bare trees are networks on the way to their vanishing point, a swirl of diminishing lines, beginning with their trunk, continuing to their largest limbs, their branches, twigs–they’re gone.
In spring they will be waving masses of color, more like solid objects, able to conceal the truth–impossible to hide in winter–that they are mostly made of air.
