Prints available: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/art/car+snow

No one is truly ready for that first snow of the season. The grasshopper in us plays all summer while we ignore that ant telling us to be prepared. So now we just don’t want to hang up that leaf rake and replace it with a snow shovel. The leaves are colorful and light compared to the first heavy wet snowfall.

But winter provides cover for more than the ground. Once the snow blanket covers the landscape, no more grass mowing, no more pruning, now more leaves – they are gone from sight until spring.

Shorter days and cold wind blowing takes away any guilt of binge watching reality TV shows under a wool blanket on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa nearby.

This old Hudson automobile rests under a blanket of fresh fallen snow in White River Junction Vermont. It won’t be disturbed anytime soon. Rusting quietly in the dead of winter. Patina changing at a glacial pace. It might be restored some day or parted out but that day won’t be this winter.

This fine art photograph of a classic old car under a blanket of snow by fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding is available for purchase as museum-quality framed art, canvas prints, metal prints, and greeting cards. Taken in White River Junction Vermont, this car is long gone now. Moved as an auto repair shop along the Connecticut River was dislodged by progress.

Old automobiles slowly rusting in rural America are similar to photography a time machine to the past. We can’t fast forward in time but we can look backwards via relics from the past gathering a patina of age from exposure to the elements, not unlike the wrinkles on a face.

Somewhere there is probably a photograph of this old car when it was new, not unlike our baby pictures.

Some of us probably still have memories of when these big old hunks of iron were the talk of the neighborhood.

“Hey the Jordon’s just had a baby. ”

“Did you see the Smith’s new car?”

“What ever happened to Grandpa’s old Hudson?”

Like the dog that went to live on a farm, who really knows what happened to the old family care when it’s owner passed. Perhaps it sits in a barn in upstate New York and shivers in the snow along the banks of a river in Vermont.

One tire is still inflated, but the other three
are flat and the metal shows its slow cancer
under constant attack by the elements.
Rodents have chewed holes in the upholstery 
and only metal springs remain of the seat.

The old truck lies in a state of slow agony
a reminder of what once was and over time
will be no longer. 

Snow minimizes the landscape. Anything below disappears until spring. Like a favorite Tonka truck left in the backyard, the weedy patch of grass known as the front lawn — what remains is the top of the old car — straining to keep its head above the frozen water.

A Patch of Old Snow

Robert Frost – 1874-1963

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner
     That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
     Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if
     Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten—
     If I ever read it.

JUNK CAR IN SNOW

By Ron Rash from Wakings

No shade tree surgery could
revive its engine, so rolled
into the pasture, left stalled
among cattle, soon rust-scabs
breaking out on blue paint, tires
sagging like leaky balloons,
yet when snow came, magical,
an Appalachian igloo
I huddled inside, cracked glass
my window as I watched snow
smooth pasture as though a quilt
for winter to rest upon,
and how quiet it was – the creek
muffled by ice, gray squirrels
curled in leaf beds, the crows mute
among stark lifts of branches,
only the sound of my own
white breath dimming the window.