Falling into Winter | Mary Pinkoski

Response to Brittany Cherweniuk’s Untitled: Winter

When I experienced Brittany Cherweniuk’s in-progress series Untitled: Winter, I was struck by the notion of falling through images that capture footfalls and light falling across the landscape, as well as the wisdom and ever-evolving nature of winter. The following is my creative response to her ongoing work.

how do we tumble into winter? is it from the wisdom pouring out of the mouths of our grandmothers? our condensed breath on the air is a quickly disappearing evidence of truth. you tell me about lessons learning to wash your wools in the snow. i picture hands red with cold, veins blue against the clean flecks of snow, knuckles buried in crisp strands of wool, squeaking strings passed against each other like an errant clump of hair an animal has left scarped on the gnarled bark of a tree. 

what brutal beauty is this season? my nana instructed us to “never bury her on the frozen prairie.” we didn’t. i picture warm, inside selves. blankets of wool that have never touched the frost. bodies that are not bound by layer after layer of cloth. her wisdom fills me with a strange relationship to this impermeable ground. i think: this place is no place to fall asleep.

when then do we fall into this place? if i am still as the river, solid but with cracked wide open in the middle, i can find the lessons of this place, this season. am i frozen enough? am I open enough? can i be both open and frozen at the same time? can i make myself river enough to do this? i wait, watching. animal tracks fall around me. in the blank paper blanket of snow, they teach me that there still is life here. my own footfalls come alongside these tracks and i consider relationships: who is the crow, the coyote, the river to me? who am i to the black-capped chickadee, the fox, the birch? if i stand in a snowfall long enough can i learn to make myself fall? can i make myself alive?

where is it that we land, if we fall? outside of urbanscapes, there must be a graceful landscape that holds seeping? a small part of earth that demonstrates what it means to let the sun flood into the ground and hold it as it arrives. if this dirt would hold me, maybe i could realize how to let the warmth spill into me like the way the light stretches and stays across a barren field until the reflection turns halo in the sky. i ache to stand in this luminesces while everything around me remains still – pieces of ourselves that have fallen away.

why does falling mean leaving behind: a track, a trail, a disappearing breath, a wisp of wool, a quickly fading light, a memory? in this snow-bound silence, you will know i am here in this season. i am falling further in this place. i am gaining and losing myself in equal layers, leaving behind miniscule moments of what i once was and what i am now. memories blur with the present until time is nothing but now

who will witness this winter? who will witness me?