The Breath of the Cold

The taste of morning is always metallic, like a copper coin pressed against the tongue. It is the damp, woolly feeling of a sweater pulled over the head before the sun has had the chance to warm the threads. I remember standing on a porch in the high country, where the air was so thick with moisture it felt like walking through a wet silk curtain. It clings to the skin, a cool, invisible weight that makes the lungs expand with a sharp, clean ache. There is no sound in such a place, only the muffled thrum of one’s own pulse, a rhythmic beating that seems to slow down to match the heavy, gray stillness of the world. We are never more present than when we are hidden, wrapped in a shroud that turns the sharp edges of reality into soft, blurred whispers. Does the world still exist when we cannot see the ground beneath our feet?

Chris Horner has captured this exact sensation of suspended weight in his image titled Morning Fog. It feels like stepping into that same cool, quiet breath of the earth. Does this stillness make you feel small, or does it make you feel held?