For the past several years I’ve given myself one assignment. Just one. That I will search for a hopefully representative image that speaks of the Winter Solstice. Some years it is nip and tuck as I await a “true” representative image that speaks of the day and moment, one that typically that involves light and color — two of the major elements of artistic expression.

A few times I’ve had to wait through most of the day for such a moment to be revealed, for I want the image to feel special. Something meaningful. Something I hope happens before sunset on this, the shortest day of the year.

This quest began some 30 years ago when I was running a small country weekly newspaper here in the prairie. I was in need of a nice image for the top fold of the front page, and yes, I realized that on that particular Tuesday afternoon that it was the Winter Solstice. Initially this was simply an excuse to find a hook for the paper being published just ahead of  Christmas and I wasn’t buying into using another Santa picture. I was in pursuit of a prairie image within the moment.

A frigid haze softened the brutal temperature as I looked across Hawk Creek while eating a sandwich, this just a couple of hours before we would send the paper to the printers. And there it was right in front of me (of all places!). With my camera in hand I traipsed through my little backyard prairie garden to the bank of the Hawk to take a picture of a neighboring farmstead nestled within the frozen haze, the sun barely poking through the dense gloom. 

From that point forward I’ve continued to search for an interesting and hopefully  meaningful Winter Solstice image. My one assignment! A year or two later it happened en route to the Post Office when a flock of pigeons burst from the town’s grain elevator to fly toward one of those rainbow-ish arcs of a sundog. One year it came down to the last light, one of those “rainbow skies,” as a friend once labeled those prairie horizons encroaching on the blue hour. Every year it seems something different reveals itself.

This, I’ll readily admit, is one of the joys of winter ranking close photographically with whims of a first hoarfrost or snowfall. Yet, I find the Solstice far more important and that it falls on a designated day. As far as the Summer Solstice goes, it’s sort of been more of a “blah” sort of feeling, for the narrowing of light hasn’t held the same flow of energy for me  as having longer days and ever more sunlight. Call it my inner pagan, if you desire.

I didn’t know what to expect this year, and truthfully I’ve been fighting a funk since the election. It’s not so much that my candidate lost, but rather who she lost to. I fear deeply for our country, for our form of government, and on a more personal level, for the continued  help necessary for my son with disabilities to have a meaningful life.

Since the election I’ve searched for some artistic revelation, For the first few days I found myself searching the prairie potholes around here for calm waters. Something psychologically soothing. On many days I found them, yet I couldn’t sit and write feelings I felt like sharing. Indeed, this is the first piece I’ve published since then.

A revelation is seemingly a moment of unexpected magic, of having a truth revealed in some inordinate way. Would something like this happen on this year’s Winter Solstice? When I climbed into the truck mid-morning I left Listening Stones in almost a frantic search, glancing into the trees and prairie grasses, searching the frozen wetlands and the cloudy sky. There was no preconceived thoughts. I wanted whatever image to be organic. Yes, there was an interesting array of wavy clouds with the sun weaving in and out, and there was also some interesting limbs painted with fresh snow. 

My mind was sort of fixated on those clouds, and the thought that it might work over an expanse of ice, so I drifted toward the spillway dam of the East Pool of the Big Stone Wildlife Refuge. Those silken clouds, though, were due southeast and nowhere near the ice, so I drove along slowly until I found my moment … two sets of animal tracks highlighted by the sun crossing the snowy wind dunes covering the ice — tracks coming from different directions that crossed before venturing off in different directions. A natural “crossroads” within nature, the hoof edges caught by a low, southerly light.

Those tracks seemed to echo precisely my feelings of what is going on not just personally, but also politically, of how the results of the election might affect our relationships with allies, neighboring countries. and even our enemies, We are all seemingly caught in this crossroad of philosophy and doubt, of what might happen in the weeks and months ahead. 

That there was no color seemed to perfectly portray this singular moment and thought in time. 

For several long moments I stared at the tracks, of their respective paths, of how they came from different directions, then crossed before venturing poetically in different directions. My thought was  that I had somehow successfully fulfilled my quest; that my Winter Solstice assignment had been accomplished. And that I was fortunate to discover and record this fragile moment as an image.