In winter I walk

Today, like the rest of the world I woke to December but I didn't follow the world, instead I followed my feet and a yearning that I am finding grows within me daily for more space, more sky, more solitude. A bigger romance with nature.


It was the first day since winter left us for spring that I have felt the cold. Yes temperatures have dropped but I haven't felt that bite, not until today when I got out onto the moor and felt the wind take my throat as I tried to speak. I find such sanctuary in this weather, where yellow leaves cling to bare hedgerows and a silent apprehension fills the empty spaces where summers wings once flew. Winter seems more ancestral to me, there is something more immediate about it. Life and death is much more obvious especially as I step over rabbit runs where fur meets fox paw. Looking at an old gnarled oak, his skeletal hand reaching for the softness of a lavender sky makes me realise how alive I feel.


I adore winters and I will walk steadfast through them, with muddy boots and earlobes reddened from the wind, I will always carry winter with me until the day I walk into my own.