Shadows on Snow

John and I went out to eat Friday evening. It was dark when we returned home. While he was putting the tonneau cover back in my SUV, I walked around behind the house and was struck by the moon shining through the trees in the back yard. Our property bordered the woods and then a ravine with a stream and beyond that a cliff. The moon was bright. The shadows cast by the tree on the still shiny (due to ice on top of it) snow were crisp, like phantom trees.

I waited until John was in the house then turned off the spotlights and stepped out onto the deck and began shooting pictures with my cellphone camera of the ghostly shadows of the trees on the eerily lit snow (faintly purplish/blue in the moonlight. I took a number of pictures, thinking about Slender Man, a creepy book I picked up on vacation and have been reading trough off and on. He sort of appears between branches looking like part of a tree at times. It was pretty spooky standing out there in the moonlight and darkness.

Then I noticed the stars twinkling in the night sky and got a shot of them, too.

I am normally apprehensive about being outside in the dark. I don't like to look up at the night sky...this is something I've struggled with since childhood. I've seen UFOs several times, at least three different ones. I have this terror of being abducted by aliens that I cannot explain. Maybe I was abducted once and have suppressed the memory and my apprehension is my subconscious mind warning me not to go there, not to open that door.

I got some awesome pictures in the two or three minutes I was outside in the dark, including ne of the bright moon behind the branches of the oak trees. I like the tree shadows on the snow- there's something eerie and ethereal about them.