Nick G Johnson
Ice fisherman II
There’s a space that separates quiet from silence. Out on the ice, you can inhabit that space.
Ice reflects sound. On the ice you hear the geese ten minutes before they appear overhead. You hear frozen snow skittering mouse-like across the surface of the ice, driven by a breeze so soft it’s not even a whisper. You hear everything there is to hear, which is very little. You hear your own private breath.
Silence is the absence of sound; quiet is sound hushed. You’re not on the ice for the fish — not entirely. You’re on the ice because you’re so close to silence that all sound becomes astonishing. You’re on the ice because there’s nowhere else in the world you can hear a barred owl at dawn, half a mile distant, call out ‘Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?’
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
