Heard on High

Watch on Vimeo.

In the news: a last-minute Brexit deal, a Covid stimulus bill passing through Congress, and possible signs of intelligent life from Proxima Centauri. Sitting outside around midnight, I watch a deer silhouetted against the snow pick her way to the stream, hooves crunching through the icy snowpack. And the lacework of tree branches: a threadbare garment. It’s one thing to feel as if we’re all connected in some cosmic web, but it’s another matter entirely to share the bleak familiarity of our solitude with strangers, I mutter to myself. Her head goes up, ears pivoting like radio telescopes in my direction.

power outage
all the glowing lights
in the sky

***

Process notes

This all came together rather quickly. There’s nothing like a power outage to remind one of just how dependent we are on the increasingly decrepit and unsustainable infrastructure of a fossil fuel-based civilization. And also how dark and quiet the nights can be. Fortunately, last night’s outage only lasted half an hour. (One year, the power went out for much of Christmas day! That’s life in the country for you.)

I’d been playing around with haiku on the theme of animals walking in human footprints, but for this video just a shot of deer hoofprints in my snowshoe tracks seemed sufficient. I found the music on ccMixter.