Ritual Snow Pile

I walk across King George's Field every day.

Earlier this year, when it snowed very heavily, King George's Field was transformed, in the way that snow always transforms a landscape: it smoothed it out, covered it over, painted it white.

Early in the morning, the sun not yet fully in the sky, the light reflected off the snow and turned it blue.

As the days went by, and people participated in the snow, moving it about, piling it up, throwing it around, the landscape changed again, and became slightly alien, pitted. There were black spots in the snow: twigs and rubbish and exposed dirt.

And as I was walking to work one morning, this came looming through the thick, heavy air. This pile of snow, with twigs inserted in apparently random arrays. At one point, it could have been a snowman, but it didn't last long. It was early morning, and it had refrozen, stuck like this.

I couldn't help seeing it as an artifact, a part of some ritual conducted hastily through the night by cloaked agents. Or even a ritual carried out randomly, unwittingly, the product of frenzied action by the same kids who displace the trolleys and leave Pot Noodle packaging in the through-road.

I was walking to work, so it would have been about 7:12am when I took this.