The photo above was taken on November 26, 2014. The coordinates: 41°24′07″N 74°19′22″W, which if you have a globe, direct you to Goshen, New York. I live a 10-minute drive from this spot.

In “Connect the Colors,” I wrote, “Perception may be the most unique and personal portion of human experience—or it may be the most identical; either way, we do not have a means of testing it, except based on anecdotes from individuals. Perhaps strawberries taste the same for you as they do for me, or they do not.” Perhaps an exception can be made to this perception about perception: the weather. Maybe we all feel it the same.

The weather in this photo: heavy, wet, clumps of snowflakes, cold on the back of one’s neck but the kind that instantly melts on the back of one’s neck and wets one’s scarf and shirt collar so that pulling one’s coat forward for more warmth instead only surprises the neck with more cold wetness. That kind. An insinuating cold wetness or a wet coldness that isn’t at all insinuating but is blunt and mean and cold. A sticky snow, the sort that covers all surfaces, like every branch on every tree and even street and road signs, which can add a challenge to driving, except the roads are impassable, so why are you driving in this?

I may think of snowstorms as pretty but annoying because I do not like the cold and I dislike the aftermath of snowstorms—sidewalks that are not shoveled and a degenerative neuromusular disease partner up in unfriendly ways—and you may think of them as beautiful invitations from the natural world for outdoors fun, but those are not two different, divergent perceptions, they are two different reactions to the same grey-on-icy-grey winter world one encounters in upstate New York.

Look at that sky you can’t see. Look at that vanished road.

This snowstorm lives on in memory for two reasons: It was photographic, so here it is, and it accumulated about an inch an hour for the day, so it was a good, strong, but not remarkable storm. (Five or six inches total, but in only five or six hours.) There were other, faster, stronger, early-season and late-season snowstorms this winter just past.

I do not take many photos, so an invitation to join a “photo-a-day” challenge is an opportunity to search through what few photos I have taken in recent years. And even though I know (not to start a sentence with “and”) that every one loves cats, the world will sometimes surprise me. A photo of Angel that I placed on Instagram last night (why would someone who does not take photos have an Instagram account? I do not know) received at least 10 hearts within 10 seconds of putting it there. The world demands it: More photos from Planet Kitty tomorrow …

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The Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge rules require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph—it’s entirely up to you. Then each day, nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.

Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command. And actually everyone can join in. So feel free to if you like the idea. Thank you, BerryDuchess, for nominating me. I have no idea who to nominate, as most of the bloggers I read seem to be participating in this.

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