Loving a Cold Misty Morning

There's something to be said for owning a dog. The need to go out every day with your four-legged friend, come rain or shine, hot or cold and to revisit the same place on multiple occasions..

We're living in a city at present. A space full of scousers and incomers from all corners of the world. It's urban, really urban. Often challenging, dirty, noisy and boistrous.

But just a short distance away is one of the local parks. It's near enough to be the daily exercise area for the hounds. At lunch time there is enough space to let them run free, to fly across the open grass chasing balls, scents, squirrels or each other. First thing in the morning though is just a quick sniff, stretch and loo break for them.

Because I have to do this daily, and I'm confined by time to a nearby area for this morning ritual, I see the same views over and over. I get to see the seasons move and change. Spring buds change to lush leaves. Seeds ripen and drop. Leaves turn, flare and fall. The sun beats down from it's midsummer zenith. Months later it lowers it's arc and the coolness arrives.

Today, as I approached the lake in the park I experience the first properly cold morning. A heavy mist hung over the water as salmon and peach smears of light tried to break through. It was thick and slow. It was nature sighing, slowing, resting. 

I struggle with the winter. Or at least I have struggled with the winter. This year, after having read the wonderful Wintering by Katherine May a while ago, and a number of similar excellent essays, I'm learning to treat it differently.

I'm not fighting it. I'm not carrying on as if in our artificially lit, digitally mandated, 24/7 modern culture there are no seasons. I'm embracing the ebb and flow. The fallow times, the dark times, the dead times. I'm allowing myself to be in tune with this time and to use it to slow down, turn inward, think, rest and sleep.

Like a hibernating dormouse or silent, leaf stripped tree I'm just letting nature and this seasonal rhythm affect me as it should.

And as I learn to stop fighting the cold, stop wishing the mist and fog away, stop beating myself up for having a different level of energy in this season, I'm starting to cherish it.

And when you cherish something, you notice it and maybe eventually might come to love it.

These images may be the beginning of that love.