Its All Black And White

While lying in bed awake last night, as is the case often times lately, my mind thought of things that seemed less than pleasing.

Everything seemed so dark, so................................DARK.

Then for some A.D.D. reason, I thought of another dark time, in a very dark, cold, black and white place.

It was January or late December or something, and it was cold. Cold and dark, but it was a good kind of cold and dark.

I waded out in the middle of a partially frozen river, to the only open water for miles around, WHICH, would attract ducks and geese, from miles around, was the theory.

I dodged ice floatsoms while navigating my way out to the small, nothing but a bump of gravel slightly above the waters surface, island.

I strategically (um, one here, two there.........) set my decoys, they positioned myself to look like a lump of snow on a gravel hump in the middle of a river, all to kill a duck or two.

Yeah, I know, its not something one spends much time thinking rationally about.

Anyways, while daylight approached (oh, I forgot to mention that I dodged ice flows while wading, in the DARK?),

I noticed something else.

"Man, this is pretty". Could've been the lack of blood flowing to my brain at that point.

No color whatsoever. Black water, with white ice flows spinning and bumping and crashing into each other as they flowed. White snow on the mountains around me, with black leaf less trees standing silently on them.

Black and White.

Laying on a gravel bar of an island gives one an interesting perspective. Kinda like placing ones ear on a railroad track.

The sound of the water flowing, and the ice flows flowing into each other, is one I'll never forget. Grinding, bumping, flowing.

The only color was in the dog's coats, but even they looked like a shade of grayish non-color, instead of the deep chocolate that they were.

No color, black and white.

It was surreal. The wind made a sond as it entered my hood, which added to the experience. So much so, that I failed to hear the 20 or so ducks that just plopped themselves all around my little island.

The dogs started twitching and whimpering as if to be saying,

"godammit dad, we DIDN'T come out here for you to lie there and get all frickin philisophical. SHOOT a goddam duck!!"

I sit up, the ducks say "what the frick!?!?"

They fly, I shoot, the dogs spring into action, and everybody (save for a few ducks) is happy.

Its all so black and white.

I wish everything could be black and white. And the good kind of cold and dark.

Don't you?