Post #1-A "She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood..."

It was a mildish, no wind, minus 20 February degree afternoon.

The snowflakes were falling in straight lines, like a turned-upside down snow globe while my faithful companions Odin, the Great Pyrenees and Casey, the Giant Schnauzer, were escorting me on our morning meandering through the utterly silent North woods.

Think: the lamp-post as Lucy first enters Narnia:

"She began to walk forward, crunch-crunch over the snow and through the wood toward the other light. In about 10 minutes she reached it and found it was a lamp-post. As she stood looking at it, wondering why there was a lamp-post in the middle of a wood and wondering what to do next, she heard a pitter patter of feet coming towards her."
-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

At that moment, my younger daughter Tess was pitter- pattering in the sunny southern climes of New Zealand, probably on a turquoise beach of the Tasman Sea, and I thought, wow, there is nothing better than knowing the weather is brutish when you are in another season, in another country, far and away.

I wanted a way to remind her of Alberta Februarys, and for her to feel badly for receiving the gift of two summers, and for abandoning us without shame or sense of betrayal. But alas, I was camera-less.

Now in my family I am at the bottom of the technology food chain so at the last phone upgrade, I was given the oldest-newest phone that I hadn’t been tutored in how to use. Never mind that I had just only mastered my last upgrade, but the camera fascists took it away despite my protests. But they did insist I pack this new/old phone in case I had an incident in the woods –what incident… like meeting Mr. Tumnus??? How thoughtful.

So here I was, six km into the deep, silent, beautifully dark and white woods with a phone I couldn’t use even if I wanted to, and even if I could, where were my readers to read the tiny screen? Oh bother.

But the hounds looked like the snow creature from Beryl Ives’ Rudolph carton, and as the pillows of snow gathered on the limbs of the stark trees, softening them with abstract stokes, I wished to record it all somehow.

At that moment I reached my hand into my MEC medium-pile fleece pants to pull out a kleenex to wipe my drippy nose, when my fingers grazed the phone. As I pulled it out I remembered my husband David taking car crazy guy pictures with it while we travelled. Let’s see, it opened thus, and he put this to his eye, or was it look through here-can’t see what the viewer see as it’s now wet with snow-and somewhere along here he pushes something until a click sounds and then..? well sorta like this...

I kept pointing at the now white dogs, the ever softening woods and even straight up at the heavenly-poured flakes dripping to earth. Not wanting my technology disability to spoil the moment, I clicked a few buttons, then stowed the camera phone as we trundled on our way back home along the disappearing path.

After my fleece pants had dried out and I was putting them away, I noticed I still had my phone in the pocket. Hey, how does this thing work anyway, I asked David. Well, let’s see he replied, and showed me how to take a picture. Put your left hand here and your pinky there to find this button (kinesthetic geography) and plugged it into the Mac to show me how to upload. Lo and behold there emerged a lovely little video, albeit crooked and cockeyed, that conveyed a wee story of our wintery wanderings. The fumbling for kleenex had inadvertently produced my own Fellini!

Constructivist learning in its purist form.

This was a lesson I would bring to my intimidated novice photography students later that spring.