Bare Trees

Bare trees, gray light
Oh, yeah, it was a cold night
Bare trees, gray light

I was alone in the cold of a winter's day
You were alone and so snug in your bed
I was alone in the cold of a winter's day
You were alone and so snug in your bed

Bare Trees was the first Fleetwood Mac album I ever bought, back in the fall of 1972.  I was living alone in a small town in Pennsylvania on my first teaching job. A man I met introduced me to Fleetwood Mac, and I fell in love.  With the band, not the man.  And this was years before Stevie Nicks came in and ruined everything with her witchy cuteness.  I'm sorry if you found that comment offensive.  (Not really.)

Anyway, I still find the album haunting and emotive.  The cover alone speaks to something deep inside me, something that, to this day, I cannot articulate.

One could easily dismiss the cover photograph as depressing.  But it's not.  I think it's really kind of magical.  What creatures are hidden behind the fog?  What mischief is carried on in the mist?  What is revealed when the clouds lift?

It is November now, and most of the leaves have fallen.  What's left are bare trees.  I could dismiss the landscape as depressing.  But I would rather fall in love with the grayness, the starkness, the mystery.  Who knows what secrets hide within the depths of darkness that give way to winter's birth?