After everything that has been happening, by design and otherwise, it seems that things are now beginning to settle. I’m in my new home in an area of the city that I once knew better than I do now, the dark nights are beginning to close in and the weather with them. The days too are darker. Wetter. Windier. It’s a time for closing in on oneself, shutting the shutters, hunkering down hygge-style in woollen shirts and cosy socks – and yes, I’ll admit to doing a bit of that.
But it’s also a time for getting out there and learning to love the weather. Clive didn’t like weather. Any weather. I don’t think I ever once heard him tell me it was a beautiful day. He did have fabulous days occasionally, but the weather was never a contributor, always a constrainer. It might be the years of that, that have led me to try to find something beautiful in the weather whatever it is doing. I used to have a sign on my desk at work that read there is no such thing as bad weather, every sky is beautiful. I used to cycle to work. Some days by the time I’d got there I needed reminding!
I need reminding now. The last 18 months have been…well, let’s say that they have been pulling me out of my centre. I could say they have been difficult, but so many things have gone exactly to plan. I could say that they have been traumatic and difficult, but so many things were also joyful and restorative. At the very least, there were a lot of things I would not want to live through again, and many of the good things were harder to reach for than they are when I am centred. Grounded.
Autumn is a good time for grounding. Ploughing up the old stuff. Clearing decks. Battening down for winter, but also planting for spring. It is no accident that the Celtic new year falls during this season.
Grounding for me, right now, means settling into my new home – the last of the major works should be completed within the next two weeks – and into my new life.
Included in the latter is finding a whole new batch of “out the door” walks. We can’t always be heading out to the beach or to the hills or wherever we would wish to be walking, but we can always just put on a pair of shoes and walk out the front door and keep on going.
My favourite city fringe walks are a little further away now. My into-the-city routes no longer apply, so I have a choice of walking further, or discovering new routes, most likely a little of both. I used to live over this side of the city 30-odd years ago, so this might involve rediscovering old haunts, places I haven’t been to in a good long while, or it might involve places I never knew about, or it might be approaching some of my more recent stomping grounds from a different direction seeing different sides of them. What used to be towards the far-point of a long walk may now be near the beginning of a short one, with everything that entails.
Some places I saw rarely and when the attention may have been starting to flag, I will now come across more often and more consciously, maybe even more deliberately.
I have made two such walks this week – one deliberately with my camera and the other quite deliberately without it. I have discovered a park which I cannot believe I did not know about, which is utterly charming, and has already made it onto my formative ‘out the door’ list – although I need to think about the two & from. Having a destination is not sufficient, we need to enjoy the getting there, and the coming home, as well.
Then today I went down to the woods, in the drizzle. Learning to love the weather. Dripping water under the trees. Learning an old lesson that weather is more easily appreciated in appropriate footwear. My boots are still in a box that has not yet made it over here. Damp-earth scents and fungi sprouting.
Both days were walks for the sake of walking. Just stretching my legs, finding my way, looking at whatever there was to be seen. But also I think there were the beginning of walk back to my own centre, now that the things that have been pulling me awry are mostly dealt with, I can look again, look differently, walk more. I can learn to remember that every sky is beautiful, and that weather enhances our days rather than the reverse.
I went today deliberately without a phone or a camera, just to walk, just to look and to listen and to scent the air.
Tomorrow I will go again. Tomorrow I will take my camera out to play. Whatever the weather.
