THOMAS BURNET, 1684 It was a winter afternoon and I had walked up into a high valley in the Canadian Rockies, following a river whose banks were formed of round boulders. The water of the lake at the head of the valley, on whose shoreline I stood, was frozen – the red reed beds at its periphery locked into place by the ice. A big storm was on its way, according to the radio weather report I had listened to back at the road. Away to the east, I could see thunderheads congregating, and the valley was flooded with storm-light. It was a fixing light, which cast the scene – stilled it, held it. But it was also a light which made the most ordinary objects seem marvellous: the individual rocks around the shore, the slopes of snow lying between the firs, the pine-needles, like pairs of dividers, which had blown on to the lake ice. A strong wind was blowing, and increasing in strength by the minute as the storm neared, herding the turbulent air before it. I had walked up here – a good three hours’ graft – because I wanted to catch the wildlife, but there was nothing to be seen.
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